


Distance of Life

by Hajinnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Do Kyungsoo | D.O-centric, Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mpreg, Mystery, Pining, Rejection, Romance, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Unrequited Love, well at least future Chansoo are in an established relationship lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:47:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 56,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hajinnie/pseuds/Hajinnie
Summary: Kyungsoo and Chanyeol are happily married with children. One morning, Kyungsoo wakes up and finds himself 14 years in the past where he is still single and the children have not been born yet. Kyungsoo discovers that time has somehow reset with only him possessing the lost memories.Now, Kyungsoo has to make Chanyeol fall in love with him all over again. The catch is, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol were enemies in the past and Chanyeol still despises Kyungsoo for a past tragedy.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Park Chanyeol
Comments: 349
Kudos: 341





	1. 2030 to 2016

**Author's Note:**

> *More tags will be added as the story advances so as to avoid spoilers
> 
> \--
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hajinnie)  
> [CC](https://curiouscat.me/hajinnie)

It is late January in the year 2030. Do Kyungsoo is a thirty-seven-year-old professor specializing in East Asian history at a large publicly funded university in Seoul.

On top of his academic achievements, qualifications and research efforts; Kyungsoo is happily married to Park Chanyeol, a fellow professor at his university who is in the field of law and specializing in criminal justice.

Chanyeol is only less than two months older than Kyungsoo and together, they are raising a pair of twin boys who are about to turn twelve years old next month in February.

Kyungsoo had met Chanyeol over a dozen years ago when they were both students still at the same university they now work in.

The children were conceived and born while Kyungsoo and Chanyeol were still postgraduate students. The pregnancy had been unplanned and it had indeed been challenging to juggle between work, studies and the twins when neither of them had thought of becoming parents.

But now, they believed it all had been worth all the effort.

The fall semester had ended in mid-December and a majority of the students in the university were on winter break. The spring semester would only begin in March, at least a month and a half away from then.

Unlike the students, Kyungsoo did not get term breaks as a faculty member, only paid leave for up to twenty days a year. But it did mean that he could focus on research supervision instead of teaching classes.

Earlier that week, a local middle-aged man had come to the university with the intention to sell a supposedly antique scroll that he found hidden in a floorboard in his house. Supposedly, according to the man, the scroll would catch a fancy price and could be of use for the university’s research.

The administration had then informed Kyungsoo about the whole deal and instructed him to appraise the said scroll.

From what Kyungsoo had managed to determine, the scroll was probably only several decades old at most and while it could be considered a vintage collector’s item, it was certainly not an antique or a relic that would fetch the price at what the seller was hoping for.

Kyungsoo was honestly impressed that such an item could actually be kept in rather pristine conditions over a few decades, especially considering how common quality the scroll was made out of.

Nonetheless, Kyungsoo did feel his interest pique in the scroll when he was given the opportunity to glance at it during the appraisal. What caught Kyungsoo’s interest in the scroll was that the writing on it appeared to be that of a fable or a tale he had never heard of before.

Although the university refused to buy it, Kyungsoo still did take it off the hands of the seller as a personal purchase for a rather generous 300,000 won; around twice the actual price of what it was actually worth.

Kyungsoo later went home that evening with the scroll sealed in a plastic zipper bag and tucked away in his briefcase.

Unlike Kyungsoo, that evening Chanyeol had to stay back a bit later at the university to assist and consult his doctorate students on their research.

Therefore, Kyungsoo arrived home first that day. The twins, Minjung and Minhyun, had been home from school for a few hours now.

The twins had a babysitter to watch them after school and once Kyungsoo arrived home, it was the babysitter’s time to leave. Although, Chanyeol had been suggesting that the twins should be mature enough to not need a babysitter by next year.

Together with the children helping out, Kyungsoo prepared dinner for all four of them.

Dinner was just about ready when Chanyeol arrived home with snow stuck on his hair and shoulders.

Kyungsoo and the twins greeted Chanyeol at the door. After Chanyeol had hugged both of his sons, he then turned to Kyungsoo for a quick and light kiss as part of their everyday ritual every morning and evening.

After dinner, the whole family divided their tasks to clean up the table and dishes. Once the chores were done, Kyungsoo allowed the twins to watch television or play games for a while since they promised that they had studied in the evening before their parents were home.

Once the twins had gone to sleep before eleven at night without even being told do, which Kyungsoo and Chanyeol found to be a miracle, they decided to spend time in their study room.

The combined salaries of two doctorate holders with a tenured position in a university allowed them to afford a cozy house with five bedrooms, two living rooms and the third floor for a mini library and study room. Although, they were smart enough to build the house in a mid-cost residential area in Seoul to avoid high taxes on such a size of property.

On the left side of the room, all the bookshelves there were Chanyeol’s and Kyungsoo had the right side of the room. In Kyungsoo’s part of the room, he even had a few glass cases to protect and display some artifacts he was allowed to keep. Kyungsoo had also framed a few of his old posters of movies and music bands he used to collect as a young adult. 

But even if they had to separate the sides of their study because of their different fields, they both had their desks close and right up against each other.

So even if they were working on different things, they could still be close together in each other’s presence.

Chanyeol had made himself a cup of coffee, while he read through some legal documents at his desk.

Kyungsoo had unfurled the scroll he bought and placed it aside, while he was searching up something online on his laptop, seeing if he could find anything related to the scroll.

Kyungsoo glanced over to his side where Chanyeol was seated at his desk, sipping the coffee from a “Happy Teacher’s Day” mug a student of his had gifted him a year or two ago.

“You’re sure you want to be drinking coffee at night if you’re not planning to pull an all-nighter?” Kyungsoo smiled a little, looking towards Chanyeol.

“You know I’m practically immune to caffeine at this point after all those years of drinking coffee as a student,” Chanyeol chuckled lightly, “Watch me fall asleep like it’s nothing in an hour.”

“You say that and later at night, I’ll find you in bed scrolling on your phone because you can’t sleep,” Kyungsoo noted, reminded of the few times where he had found Chanyeol in a similar situation.

“Well, what do you suppose I should have then?” Chanyeol placed down the mug on his desk, turning his attention from the document file and towards Kyungsoo instead.

“You know I’m joking,” Kyungsoo added, feeling in a rather playful mood that night, “You know you can have anything you want.”

“What about the whiskey my parents gave us for our anniversary last year? We still have over half of the bottle left?” Chanyeol suggested, “Your doctor shouldn’t scold you for one shot, right?”

Kyungsoo squirmed a little in his seat, twitching his neck, “Ah, I suppose it should be alright to have a shot or two. My next appointment is in February so it’s not like the alcohol would show up in a blood test by then. You really are peer pressuring me into drinking while you’re having coffee, aren’t you?”

“Well you don’t have to if you really don’t want to,” Chanyeol chuckled a little, “We don’t have to go in early tomorrow so I thought it would be nice to unwind once in a while.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Kyungsoo agreed, nodding his head, “Take it out then. I’ll just have a little, maybe half of a shot.”

Eagerly, Chanyeol padded off to the kitchen to retrieve the whiskey bottle from their wine cooler and brought two shot glasses back with him to the study on the third floor.

When Chanyeol got back, Kyungsoo was reading the transcript of the writing on the scroll he had typed out on the computer for ease of access.

As promised, Kyungsoo had about half a shot of whiskey and had managed to down it all within a single breath; clearly an ability he had acquired from his days of binge drinking while single and still studying.

Chanyeol took an entire shot of whiskey and while he did manage to finish it all within a single breath, he did wince at the strong aftertaste, while Kyungsoo hardly felt it if at all.

Chanyeol grabbed his half-finished coffee at the side of the table and drank it in an effort to rid the strong aftertaste of whiskey, much to Kyungsoo’s amusement.

Kyungsoo always knew his husband was merely a casual drinker and he actually found it quite adorable. It was one of the small things about Chanyeol which had made Kyungsoo fall in love with him. 

“So, what does that scroll say?” Chanyeol asked, initiating conversation to detract from his drinking whiskey plan gone slightly off, “I heard the university wouldn’t buy it because it wasn’t actually worth much. So why’d you get it? There must be something that piqued your interest inside there.”

“Yeah, I just felt odd when I read what was on the scroll. I’ve worked with and handled numerous artifacts and sometimes I do feel in awe at such a piece of history, but I’ve never felt the same way I did at this even if it was probably just handwritten on some stationery shop-bought calligraphy scroll some decades ago,” Kyungsoo explained as his eyes were fixed on the transcript displayed on his laptop screen.

“Why? How did you feel?” Chanyeol rested his cheek on a perched palm, genuinely interested to hear about Kyungsoo’s experience with it.

“It was…ominous,” Kyungsoo answered, finally finding the right word to describe his emotions, “It resonated in me on a personal level, as if it was a reminder of some sorts specially directed at me.”

“Really? Let me see,” Chanyeol wheeled his chair over to Kyungsoo’s desk, pushing it right against the armrest of Kyungsoo’s chair so he could have a closer look at Kyungsoo’s computer screen.

Like Kyungsoo, Chanyeol didn’t have all too perfect eyesight and it was clearly deteriorating as they got older, although he still boasted at having better vision than Kyungsoo.

Too lazy to reach for his glasses, Chanyeol squinted his eyes and hunched his shoulders slightly so his eyes could be at level with the screen in order to read the transcript.

Chanyeol nodded occasionally and made little “hmm” noises before looking back at Kyungsoo who had been alternating between looking at him and the computer screen too.

“It’s basically a story,” Chanyeol pointed out, “It doesn’t even seem like a poem of some sorts and even then the style of writing is a bit straight forward, like a note instead of a fictitious tale that was plucked out of a storybook.

“Which makes it resound even more to me personally,” Kyungsoo attested.

“Which part specifically?” Chanyeol raised an eyebrow, leaning over his chair to put his face closer to Kyungsoo’s, “It seems like a common tale of reincarnation and redemption of someone who dies young because of his own faults and then wakes up in a younger version of himself, where he is given a chance to undo all of his mistakes and lead a better life. I’m no history buff but those themes are pretty common in tales as far as I know.”

“I know, I know. I still find the whole thing interesting though,” Kyungsoo affirmed.

Chanyeol snickered at Kyungsoo’s response and took advantage of the proximity to quickly lean in and kiss Kyungsoo on the cheek. Which elicited an instant smile and uncontrollable blush on Kyungsoo’s behalf.

“I still got the moves, don’t I?” Chanyeol teased, beaming with a smile.

“Of course you do and I hope you always do,” Kyungsoo replied, chuckling.

“Whatever makes you happy,” Chanyeol mentioned, side hugging Kyungsoo and chuckling along too.

Sure, they had their rough and hard times but now that they were both married, keeping each other and their children happy and cared for was their utmost priority.

After checking up on the twins, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol went to bed after midnight with the alarm already set at six in the morning so they could wake up their children and see them off to school even though they didn’t have to go into the university until a bit later.

Kyungsoo woke up the following morning because of the morning sun shining through his window. Upon seeing that it was already rather bright outside, Kyungsoo instantly thought he had overslept and that the children were late to school if he didn’t wake them up yet.

Kyungsoo immediately turned to the other side of the bed where Chanyeol slept to wake him up but found it empty and untouched. Not because Chanyeol had woken up but because no one was sleeping there in the first place. But Kyungsoo didn't know that yet. 

Then Kyungsoo realized something else. The bed was smaller. It was certainly not the large bed he shared with Chanyeol. The bedsheets were a different color and pattern and so was his blanket and pillows.

Kyungsoo found his glasses wedged under a pillow and put them on, only to see that he was back in his old room in his father’s house.

There was no mistaking it because Kyungsoo had a few movie and band posters he adored hung up on his wall. These posters were supposed to be already framed up and now hung on the wall in his study. 

Kyungsoo’s father had passed away while he was still in graduate school and he hadn’t lived there since after he married Chanyeol over ten years ago, although he continued to maintain the house to inherit to his children one day.

Confused, Kyungsoo jumped out of bed and found a phone sitting on his nightstand. It was the old Samsung Galaxy S6 that Kyungsoo used to own, certainly a very outdated phone for his time but very much up to date in the mid-2010s.

Kyungsoo tried pressing a button and was surprised to see the phone screen come to life and clearly displaying the time “12:10 pm” and the date 2016-10-26.

“What?” Kyungsoo muttered to himself, trying to punch in the security passcode for the phone but failing to remember what it was.

Kyungsoo definitely didn’t believe the time and date displayed on the phone. It was a miracle that a fifteen-year-old phone still worked and he thought it was merely just a glitch due to old software. 

Kyungsoo swore he had thrown the phone into an electronic parts recycling bin once it had stopped working, so he didn’t know how it was still intact and in good shape.

Giving up on the phone passcode after less than a minute, Kyungsoo rushed out of his room and hoped to see Chanyeol and the twins outside telling him that they had decided to sleep over there for the weekend, but Kyungsoo had just forgotten about it.

But instead, Kyungsoo found a middle-aged man with a potbelly, sitting on the floor in the living room with the sliding doors to the courtyard wide open as he puffed smoke from his cigarette.

Kyungsoo’s jaw dropped in shock when he realized this man was his own father.

“Oh, Kyungsoo, you’re awake? Do you have class today? I’m hungry and I didn’t cook. Let’s go out and eat,” Kyungsoo’s father, Choongsun, mentioned.

“What are you still doing here?” Kyungsoo blurted out in confusion at his supposed to be dead but apparently alive father.

Choongsun laughed, throwing his head back, “Now even my own son is scolding me for doing nothing all day. You sound like an old man, Kyungsoo.”

“Huh?” Kyungsoo remained confused, not realizing he was still holding onto the phone in his hand, “What’s actually going on?”


	2. 26th October 2016

Ignoring his father, Kyungsoo dashed off to the washroom. He needed to see it, needed to confirm that his theory might be true. The theory that he had somehow traveled back in time, because it was the only plausible explanation as to how this was all happening.

Kyungsoo gasped once he saw his own reflection in the mirror. He was definitely visibly younger. After all, the last time he recalled, Kyungsoo was a married thirty-seven years old and here he was just a twenty-three years old postgraduate student.

Kyungsoo pulled on his cheeks, even knocked his skull a few times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. And even despite that, it appeared that everything going on was stemmed in reality.

Remembering that he had two wisdom teeth grow in at twenty-five years old, Kyungsoo opened his mouth to look inside the mirror. He even inserted a few fingers to prod his gums and sure enough, the two wisdom tooth that were supposed to be there was still missing.

Kyungsoo lifted the hem of his graphic t-shirt to look at his belly where the C-section scar from childbirth was but it wasn’t there too. Even if Kyungsoo remembered when his wisdom tooth came in wrongly, he was sure he wouldn’t be wrong about the scar he had because men who could conceive like him were uncommon.

Still, in a fit of confusion, Kyungsoo rushed back out to the living room and turned on the television and he was then presented by advertisements and television shows that did air around the year 2016 and not from the year he came from. There was even an outdated iPhone 7 advertisement on television. 

Although this gave Kyungsoo further evidence that he had somehow returned to the past, he was even more stressed at his inability to explain how all of this was possible. He was a historian, not a physicist, who was more likely to discover time travel. 

The first person Kyungsoo could think of to help him during such a predicament was none other than Chanyeol, his own husband.

Kyungsoo absolutely had to find Chanyeol and tell him of what was going on. Maybe Chanyeol could be in the exact same situation as him, Kyungsoo had yet to find out.

“Dad, I’m taking the car! I’ll buy you food on the way home,” Kyungsoo half-yelled, finding a jacket in his old cupboard which he put on before hastily grabbing a pair of sneakers and the car keys hanging on a hook near the doorway. Luckily, Kyungsoo still remembered where his father used to keep it.

“But you’re not supposed to be driving!” Choongsun yelled back from the living room.

“It’s fine. I’ll just be a while. I’ll get you fried chicken on the way home, alright?” Kyungsoo negotiated, bargaining with his father's favorite food. 

“Oh, okay then,” Choongsun shrugged his shoulders, continuing to smoke and watch television at the same time.

Kyungsoo was panting when he got into his father’s old car, taking a few moments to calm himself down before attempting the journey to where Chanyeol was.

Kyungsoo tried to remember. In the fall of 2016, both he and Chanyeol were postgraduate students at the same university but in different faculties. They were not yet dating at the time and Chanyeol still lived with his family too.

Heck, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol were barely even friends at the time. That was the hurdle Kyungsoo had to overcome but he ignored that for now over the more pressing need to see and consult Chanyeol about this whole back to the past thing.

After all, from the time Kyungsoo came from, Chanyeol was not only his husband but also his best friend and number one confidante. Whenever Kyungsoo was faced with a problem he couldn’t possibly deal with alone, his first instinct was to go to Chanyeol for help.

Kyungsoo had his hands on the steering wheel, still inside the unmoving car in his father’s garage as he tried to remember where Chanyeol’s parent’s house was in 2016.

Reminded that Chanyeol’s parents had never moved, Kyungsoo was sure Chanyeol would be in the same house where they would drop off their twins every other weekend in the future.

Slowly, Kyungsoo backed out of the driveway of his father’s modest two-bedroom detached house in an older part of the city and drove his way to Chanyeol and his future parent-in-law’s house.

The roads had changed in the past fourteen years and Kyungsoo’s memory of it wasn’t really that good anymore when he had been used to the future system. However, the way there was mostly the same and the landmarks did eventually help guide Kyungsoo there.

At least cars hadn’t changed that much and Kyungsoo could still drive what was considered an “old” car for him.

Out of curiosity, Kyungsoo turned on the radio during the drive and the DJ on air mentioned popular movies and artists which were relevant at the time such as the first Deadpool movie and some new girl group debuting from a “Big 3” entertainment company. Even the billboard advertisements lining the sides of the road attested him that fact.

If Kyungsoo had thought that this was all just a prank, he certainly did not now. Everything seemed and was indeed too real. He really was in 2016 and no longer the year 2030.

However he had ended up here, first things first, and that was to see Chanyeol and figure out if he was the only one in this situation.

The Kyungsoo of 2016 would have been intimidated to be in such a place but since this Kyungsoo was technically that from 2030 but in the body of 2016 Kyungsoo, he just felt restless and eager to get to the bottom of this problem.

Kyungsoo drove through the well tarred and maintained road in the upper-class residential district of the city where Chanyeol lived in with his parents. It looked different in 2016 than in 2030, of course.

Most noticeably, some houses that had been built in 2030 had not yet existed now. But thankfully, Chanyeol’s house was in the same place and still mostly looked the same as it did in the future.

Kyungsoo pulled up at the driveway outside Chanyeol’s large house with glass fixtures before jogging up to the gate and repeatedly smashing the intercom button until a house helper answered it.

“Please, I’m here to see Park Chanyeol. My name is Do Kyungsoo. I go to university with him. This is urgent, be quick. It’s about…uh- an assignment due today. He hasn’t been answering my calls and I really need his part for the slides,” Kyungsoo lied straight to his teeth, knowing he’d have to bluff his way around to possibly meet Chanyeol in the circumstances in 2016.

“I’m sorry but Park Chanyeol isn’t home. He left for class early this morning. He won’t be home until evening,” The female house helper replied over the static noise of the intercom.

“Fuck,” Kyungsoo swore under his breath before composing himself, “Well, thank you then. I’ll just go look for him on campus.”

Kyungsoo dashed back into his father’s car with the engine still running and drove all the way to the university. At the back of his head, he was worried about his father still being alive in the present day and about the fried chicken he so loved and wanted for lunch.

Kyungsoo was still too confused and disoriented with everything around him to appreciate the fact that his father was still alive at this time. He needed answers or to at least to find Chanyeol first before he could deal with an overwhelming reality.

As a staff of the university in 2030, parking was free on campus for him but in 2016 as a student without a seasonal parking pass, Kyungsoo was forced to take the day pass and pay the price of a small lunch later on at the end of the day.

At least, the reverse parking only policy hadn’t been implemented yet then on campus and Kyungsoo quickly swerved on the nearest empty spot he could find before running into the lobby like a student who was minutes away from a submission deadline.

A part of Kyungsoo actually missed being this young because he was much more agile and mobile, even if he was far from being the fittest person around. He was only thirty-seven in 2030 but he certainly did feel himself aging already, especially when it came to back and shoulder pains from sitting at a desk too long.

Also fortunate for him, even though the university’s interior had gone through some design changes and renovation by 2030, mostly everything was in the same place as it was in 2016. It just looked different.

“Yo, Kyungsoo!?” A disembodied voice called out for Kyungsoo while he running up some stairs to get to the law faculty.

Kyungsoo turned around on the stairs where other students were also either climbing up and down, to see his best friend at the time, Baekhyun, tapping him on the shoulder.

“I thought you weren’t coming to campus for the whole week?” Baekhyun seemed a bit happy to see Kyungsoo, “You said you were going to huddle yourself in your room all week long with your laptop and some coffee so you can work on your thesis topic proposal. What happened to that?

“Baekhyun?” Kyungsoo blurted out. The 2016 Kyungsoo had probably seen Baekhyun recently but the 2030 Kyungsoo had yet to see Baekhyun in at least seven years.

While they were best friends in university and remained so for a few years after that, their friendship unofficially ended and contact between them started to cease when Baekhyun moved away after landing a promising job overseas.

In 2016, Baekhyun was a third-year student majoring in Business. Unlike Kyungsoo who had graduated in spring and was now in his master’s degree program, Baekhyun was a year or two behind his peers because he had entered university late.

Despite their differing majors and years, they had met each other in a community service club which they both had decided to join for extra credit.

“I…um…yeah,” Kyungsoo was at a loss for words, trying to find something generic to say that wouldn’t raise any suspicion that he was actually a thirty-seven-years old man in his twenty-three-years old body. Even if the chances of someone figuring that out would be extremely unlikely.

“So you changed your mind and decided to come to campus to study? You should have told me so we could grab lunch together. How’s your final thesis topic coming up? Did you decide on what it would be?” Baekhyun questioned, holding a coffee cup in his hand.

“Don’t worry about my thesis. I already know what it will be and in fact, I have the first few hundreds of words of my entire research paper memorized,” Kyungsoo hasted, putting his hands on Baekhyun’s shoulders as if to demand extra attention to what he was going to say next.

“Well, that’s great!” Baekhyun was cheerful but also confused, "Did you actually already start the research?"

“That’s not important,” Kyungsoo brushed off, “Right now, I need to know where Park Chanyeol is.”

“Park Chanyeol!?” Baekhyun was astonished and taken aback, “Why on earth would you want to see him? He hates your guts, Kyungsoo. Did you knock your head on something or fall off the bed this morning? Are you having a fever?”

“Look, I can’t explain it to you now but I hope I will be able to. I’ll talk to you later, alright? I really need to rush to the law faculty and see if Chanyeol is there,” Kyungsoo replied.

“W-why?” Baekhyun remained baffled.

“I’ll tell you, later on, I promise. You just go back to class now,” Kyungsoo said back as he took his hands off of Baekhyun and continued running up the stairs.

“Huh?” Baekhyun muttered to himself, probably as confused as Kyungsoo was.

Kyungsoo finally arrived at the law faculty floor and briskly walked through the corridors because he didn’t want to attract a lot of attention with his running.

While he was passing through, Kyungsoo would peek through the glass windows of the classrooms and offices to hopefully find Chanyeol in one of them.

A few students and professors did catch Kyungsoo peering through their classroom window and a few did attempt asking him if he needed anything, but Kyungsoo had already left by the time they could approach him. Kyungsoo didn’t think it was too wise to talk to people when he wasn’t sure of how he had ended up fourteen years in the past in the first place.

When he failed to find Chanyeol on the entire floor of the law faculty, Kyungsoo decided to look for Chanyeol in the computer labs and the library after; the two places he could think of that was most frequented by students.

By chance, Kyungsoo ran into Chanyeol in the hallway just a few rooms away from the computer labs he had intended to look for Chanyeol in.

Kyungsoo gasped at seeing the younger version of his husband in front of his eyes. While Chanyeol hadn’t aged that much in fourteen years and still looked almost the same as he would in 2030, the Chanyeol of 2016 was visibly younger and fresh-face; which constantly reminded Kyungsoo that the Chanyeol he was facing now was clearly not the same man he married.

Chanyeol was dressed in a black hoodie and jeans with his bag slung only on one shoulder. His hair was thicker, darker and a bit more unruly here unlike the Chanyeol which Kyungsoo knew in 2030 who had been fretting over his first few strands of graying hair.

At this point in time, Chanyeol was in the first year of his postgraduate law degree- at least that was what Kyungsoo remembered because he wasn’t particularly close with Chanyeol at the time.

“Chanyeol!” Kyungsoo panted with his arms on his hips, confronting Chanyeol in the slightly empty hallway after peak lunch hour was over and afternoon classes had started.

Chanyeol looked confused too but not in the same sense Kyungsoo had been feeling since he woke up to find himself fourteen years in the past. Chanyeol’s confusion was mostly the thought of what Kyungsoo was doing and talking to him in the first place.

Chanyeol sighed, looking a bit annoyed as he adjusted the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder, “What is it, Kyungsoo?”

Faced with such an attitude, Kyungsoo had no doubt that this was definitely the Chanyeol of 2016. As it is, it really did seem that Kyungsoo was the only one who had been thrust back into time. But the feeling of that kind of isolation had not hit Kyungsoo yet at the time.

Nonetheless, Kyungsoo ignored that all for something else which he deemed more important. To tell Chanyeol what was going on in hopes that he might believe Kyungsoo and that they could somehow figure this out together. After all, if they could be married a few years from then, it wasn’t really supposed to be an impossible feat, was it?

“Chanyeol, what I’m about to tell you might sound really crazy but will you hear me out? Please? This is really important to me and I really need to tell you this,” Kyungsoo sounded desperate enough.

“Fine, but be quick,” Chanyeol sighed, shaking his head, clearly expressing the notion that he wished to be somewhere else.

“Okay, first things first,” Kyungsoo attempted to compose himself, not wanting it to be so obvious that he was all over the place, “We actually start dating in December of this year which is less than two months away from now. In the summer of next, I get accidentally knocked up with your baby because the condom broke or something like that and on Valentine’s Day of 2018, I give birth to twins- our children. We also get married shortly after the twins are born. I am from the year 2030. I am thirty-seven, not twenty-three. I think this really creepy scroll I bought from some man is the culprit that sent me back in time. I know you might not believe me but I swear this is all true! I’ll even prove it to you- if I can!”

Chanyeol took a few moments to process all the information Kyungsoo had just presented him with.

Chanyeol even dryly chuckled at one point before he turned back to look Kyungsoo in the eye and coldly responded, “I’m not sure which drugs you’re on right now but I admit you do sound a bit convincing. But you could just be a good actor, I don't know," Chanyeol paused for a while before continuing, "The future has not happened yet and I do not believe in a predetermined fate, so there is actually a chance that what you told me can become true.”

“Right!?” Kyungsoo was beginning to feel a lot more hopeful.

“-but,” Chanyeol interjected, “Why would I ever marry and have children with you? Why would I fall in love with the man who killed my best friend, Jongdae? Did you think I’ve forgiven you, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo’s breath hitched. His chest tightened up at the mere mention of it as he brought up a hand to clasp over where his heart was.

This was the reality of this time which Kyungsoo did not want to deal with again. Which he had tried to ignore when he first found himself in the past again. He had foolishly hoped it might be different this time around but it clearly wasn’t.

The pain in his heart was not only from the harsh but true words Chanyeol had just told him. It was also from the lifelong injury he suffered in the car accident, where Kyungsoo survived and Jongdae hadn’t.

Kyungsoo had been the one driving that night when they crashed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say the fic was supposed to be angsty, didn't I? :D


	3. 26th October 2016 and a bit of the past future

Chanyeol sighed yet again, obviously sick of Kyungsoo’s presence already, “Well, if you have nothing else to say, I’m leaving.”

Kyungsoo was rendered speechless, not knowing what else to say. He felt that he needed to say something but he just didn’t know what it would be without making him look like a total lunatic. Kyungsoo felt utterly helpless and lost.

Kyungsoo didn’t try to stop Chanyeol from leaving either, letting Chanyeol lightly bump into him on the way out. Kyungsoo could just imagine how much seething resentment Chanyeol had for him.

There was no way he could ever convince Chanyeol they were married with children in the future. In the different version of the year 2016, Kyungsoo had done nothing of this trying to convince Chanyeol but yet somehow everything seemed to fall in place naturally.

A part of Kyungsoo felt that he had made things further complicated by impulsively telling Chanyeol of the future. He regretted speaking out now. Kyungsoo thought he should have just let the flow of events take its course and fall into place, like they once had in the past of the future he came from.

But Kyungsoo had not given up yet. He was still going to keep trying and finding ways but this rushed and poorly thought out plan was certainly not going to work. He needed to come up with something better.

Needing some time to collect his thoughts and compose himself before making any further decisions, Kyungsoo found an empty bench in a secluded corner of the campus and sat there by himself.

He remembered the car crash that killed Jongdae occurring on the night of December 24th, 2015; almost a year before the time he was now in. Kyungsoo held a hand over his mouth as he recalled the tragic incident.

It was raining and snowing at the same time that Christmas eve night. The roads were slippery and covered with sleet. Jongdae was drunk but Kyungsoo was not as he had been the designated driver after their Christmas Eve party in conjunction with celebrating the end of their finals and graduation in the following spring.

Jongdae and Chanyeol had been classmates since freshman year. Jongdae had joined the same club Baekhyun and Kyungsoo was in, where they were all acquainted with each other. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol weren’t very close at the time, they were merely mutual friends whose social circles sometimes overlapped.

Kyungsoo had dropped off Chanyeol first that night and was on the way to Jongdae’s place when he decided that maybe going twenty kilometers over the speed limit wouldn’t be too bad so they could make it home faster. 

Unfortunately, the speed, slippery road conditions, and poor visibility led to Kyungsoo losing control of the car and unable to make a course correction which ended up in the car crashing head-on into a concrete wall divider. Kyungsoo's car was a total loss. 

Jongdae’s airbag did not deploy and he died almost instantly due to a severe concussion. Kyungsoo survived but he was hit by shrapnel and the force of the deploying airbag right into his chest gave him a lifelong heart injury which would be made worse through his own habits.

Because of the accident, Kyungsoo had to delay his entry into his postgraduate program by a semester. He had initially intended to begin graduate school in spring but had to delay it to fall because he was still in recovery, both physically and emotionally.

Out of grief, Kyungsoo did not attend his own undergraduate graduation ceremony because he could not bear to see Jongdae’s mother go up on stage to receive her deceased son’s award. On top of that, he couldn’t also bear to see Chanyeol who firmly believed that this was all Kyungsoo’s fault.

In the future, despite Kyungsoo being happily married to the man he loved with two beautiful children and working in his dream job; sometimes, Kyungsoo felt that he deserved none of this placid happiness.

Even when Chanyeol came to terms with his grief and learned that blaming Kyungsoo for Jongdae’s death was an unhealthy coping mechanism, Kyungsoo himself never did forgive himself. An unacknowledged part of him felt that he needed to be punished and needed to suffer for the pain he had caused.

Kyungsoo sighed and slouched his shoulders, still sitting on that empty bench in that isolated part of the campus as he attempted to think of what steps to take next.

Ideally, the best thing would be to return to the year 2030. If that failed and he really was stuck to repeat the past, Kyungsoo needed to remember and redo everything he did right to make sure the future of 2030 would happen again.

Technically coming from the future, Kyungsoo had the advantage of knowing about things that would happen but had yet to occur in the present time. He had the advantage of being an older and more experienced person in his younger body.

But yet, he could only control himself at best and not others. Kyungsoo began to worry if Chanyeol would never overcome his feelings and change his opinion about Kyungsoo, not especially after the stunt Kyungsoo pulled off by boldly telling Chanyeol about a future that did not yet exist in this timeline.

What if Kyungsoo jinxed everything and only sparked off a chain of events that would lead to him and Chanyeol never being together? Kyungsoo began to fret.

Realizing that he would get nothing done sitting there, Kyungsoo got up and left the university, remembering to get his father’s favorite fried chicken on the way home.

Kyungsoo took some time to sit down with his father and have lunch together in the kitchen of their old home.

It then hit Kyungsoo how much he missed his father, so much that he was willing to listen to his father complaining about his co-workers at his job where he worked as a car salesman. When usually, Kyungsoo would just go on his phone or look elsewhere when his father began ranting about work again.

Kyungsoo was an only child and his parents had been divorced since he was nine years old. Since then, he had been living with his father, due to Kyungsoo’s mother’s remarriage and his father’s reluctance to let him live with his stepfather.

Kyungsoo’s father, Do Choongsun, had been supportive of his studies and even helped Kyungsoo a lot through his unplanned pregnancy. While Kyungsoo and Chanyeol had been busy pursuing their studies on top of caring for young twins, Choongsun was the one who often babysat and helped them through the hectic times.

That was until Choongsun’s death from a heart attack on May 5th, 2022, three years before Kyungsoo completed his P.H.D.

If Kyungsoo really was stuck here in the past with no chance of ever returning to the future, he still had around six years or so to advise his father to get medical treatment and regular checkups to possibly prevent the heart attack he would die from.

Kyungsoo thought that, perhaps, he should be less selfish and actually think of others and prevent them from an impending doom instead of being so self-centered and only think of his own future happiness.

After lunch, Kyungsoo returned to his room and managed to log onto his laptop after a few tries. The password was one of the few combinations of passwords he used for his various accounts, which were fortunately still the same few that Kyungsoo used in the future. 

It took Kyungsoo a bit of adjusting to the older user interface of computers but once he was presented with it, it didn’t take him much time to fall back to what he was used to in the past- now his present.

One of the first things Kyungsoo did was to book a medical checkup for his father in a few week’s time. He hadn’t told his father about the medical appointment yet but he would just have to do it before the date, and somehow comes up with an excuse as to why he suddenly signed his father up for it.

Then, Kyungsoo spent at least more than two hours on various web search engines, looking up terms such as “travel back in time”, “mystic scroll” and “time travel”.

Of course, none of it actually showed Kyungsoo what he wanted to see. Time travel pointed him to physics research and theories he did not understand. And everything else directed Kyungsoo to fictional fantasy TV shows, movies or books instead.

Not wanting to waste any more time on that, the next thing Kyungsoo had to do was to map out a timeline of future events, according to what he remembered. So he could strategize and hopefully repeat what would lead him into the future he knew.

On a piece of large drawing paper Kyungsoo found in his shelf and with a black marker, Kyungsoo began mapping out a chronological timeline of events of the coming years.

On Chanyeol’s coming 24th birthday on November 27th, 2016, Chanyeol would be cooped up all alone at home in his room. Kyungsoo wouldn’t have remembered it was Chanyeol’s birthday until it was past seven in the evening. Kyungsoo didn’t realize it until he logged onto Facebook and received a notification saying it was Chanyeol’s birthday. Chanyeol hadn’t used his Facebook in two years by then, which explained the only reason why Kyungsoo was still even on Chanyeol’s friends list.

Then, after pacing up and down in his room for a good anxious half an hour, Kyungsoo would have dashed out of his house and hailed a taxi to drive him around. He stopped at a bakery first to buy a last-minute birthday cake and some candles and then had the taxi drive him to Chanyeol’s home.

When Chanyeol was informed by his house helper that Kyungsoo was outside and wanted to see him, Chanyeol would have said no and told the house helper to send him away. That was until he looked into the gate’s security camera feed to see Kyungsoo standing outside in the cold with the cake box under his arm.

At that moment, Chanyeol felt pity for Kyungsoo. He was not the only one who lost a friend that winter night. Kyungsoo did too, after all.

Reluctantly, Chanyeol would have let Kyungsoo inside and allowed him to celebrate Chanyeol’s birthday. Chanyeol was alone that night as his parents were away on a business trip.

It was Chanyeol’s first birthday since Jongdae’s death and it had been a particularly hard day for him. Kyungsoo’s presence had been an unexpected relief to Chanyeol and he found himself even laughing at one point when Kyungsoo tried making a joke.

That was also the same night when Chanyeol began to realize that his hatred of Kyungsoo was actually a poor coping mechanism of his in moving on from Jongdae’s death. It was easier to blame someone else for it instead of dealing with the grief in other healthier ways, Chanyeol would eventually learn.

In the following weeks, Chanyeol gradually came up with the nerves to finally ask Kyungsoo out, so they could meet and he could properly apologize to Kyungsoo.

In the first weeks of December, Chanyeol asked Kyungsoo out for dinner to a barbecue restaurant. There, he apologized and bowed his head so low he almost risked burning his hair on the heated metal barbecue plate.

Kyungsoo apologized too and that night, they made a pact to try and be better friends and people in honor of the one who brought them together, Jongdae.

A few weeks later on the 1st anniversary of Jongdae’s death, they visited the mausoleum where Jongdae’s ashes were interred together with his family.

Then, later in the evening, they cried their hearts out together in the booth of a karaoke lounge while attempting to sing Jongdae’s favorites ballads in his memory.

It wasn’t really clear when they actually started dating because, after December 2016, they were practically much glued to the hip. Baekhyun was surprised to see them getting so close but he understood.

They were always together on campus, except when Chanyeol had classes and Kyungsoo had his own thing to do. 

At this point, Chanyeol was driving Kyungsoo to campus every morning and back home every evening. Chanyeol would even wait outside the cafe where Kyungsoo worked part-time, just so he could make sure Kyungsoo got home safely.

Soon, they began to have sleepovers at each other’s houses. Then, they befriended each other’s parents and eventually, they were kissing and then sleeping in the bed and having sex with each other.

Kyungsoo got pregnant as early as May 2017 but he didn’t know until he was almost two months along. Kyungsoo was reluctant to keep the pregnancy because he didn’t think he was suitable to be a parent. Furthermore, male pregnancy was uncommon and considered heavy risk. 

Poured with overwhelming support from Chanyeol and both their families, Kyungsoo decided to keep the pregnancy, even when it shocked him to learn that he was carrying twins.

In October 2017, when Kyungsoo was five months pregnant and still coming to campus almost daily with a growing belly containing twins that liked to kick daily, Chanyeol proposed to him.

Kyungsoo said no almost immediately because it was too soon and because he didn’t want it to seem as if Chanyeol had only married him for the sake of the babies. Chanyeol laughed it off but said that he would be asking again after the birth then.

On Valentine’s Day of 2018, Kyungsoo gave birth to fraternal twin boys just two minutes apart through C-section. The older twin was named Do Minhyun and the younger one named Do Minjung.

The twins had Kyungsoo’s surname because he and Chanyeol were unmarried at the time and the law stated that illegitimate children could only have the surname of the birthing parent in that case.

Two months later, in April, Chanyeol kept his promise and proposed to Kyungsoo. This time, Kyungsoo said yes and they were married shortly later in the summer on June 9, 2018. The twins’ surname was also changed to “Park” later on, which was what Kyungsoo wanted.

In the spring of 2019, Kyungsoo completed and graduated with his master’s degree in East Asian history, albeit one semester later than he originally predicted because of the time off he had to take for the pregnancy.

Chanyeol graduated with his postgraduate law degree in the fall of the same year.

The following year in 2020, they both began their P.H.Ds while also tutoring undergraduates at the same university, alongside juggling between raising their children.

Despite being in different faculties, the university allowed them to have a joint office together with a bit of extra space for them to accommodate their twins while they were working. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo became rather popularly known in the university as the teacher couple who were happily married and with children whom the students too adored.

On May 5th, 2022, Choongsun collapsed at work and was rushed to a hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His cause of death was ruled out to be a heart attack.

Chanyeol completed his research and graduated with his P.H.D in law in 2024. Kyungsoo graduated a year later with his P.H.D in East Asian history. They were both absorbed into full-time tenured positions as professors at the university.

For their 10th wedding anniversary in 2028, they decided to lay the first brick on the foundation of what would be their dream family home.

A year later, the house was completed and they had barely been living there for six months when Kyungsoo found himself waking up fourteen years in the past in the year 2016.

That night in his second time of being in October 26th, 2016, Kyungsoo went to sleep in his old bed, feeling entirely lost and lone in _this_ world. It was his first night here in a world where his future husband hated him and his children did not exist yet.


	4. 27th - 29th October 2016

Kyungsoo spent the following day cooped up in his room, lying on his bed, trying to trace his future or rather what he experienced already as a past.

If he wasn’t trying to write down everything he remembered in case he would forget them, Kyungsoo was wondering about what happened to the future he left behind.

Did he cease to exist there when he returned to the past? If he did, then what happened to Chanyeol and his children? Kyungsoo couldn’t bear the idea of leaving them for a few days for a conference trip, least to say for what seemed to be a permanent reality.

Kyungsoo trusted the future Chanyeol with the kids and that he’d take care of them well even without Kyungsoo, but it still pained him to think that he couldn’t be there with them especially right when they probably needed him the most.

Kyungsoo worried to end until he came up with another possible theory that perhaps the future never existed and that all he experienced was maybe just a figment of his imagination or perhaps an extremely vivid dream. Maybe, Kyungsoo really was going insane to have such experiences because other than his own memories, he had no way of proving that the future he thought he experienced was indeed real.

The thought that the future might not be real actually left Kyungsoo feeling somewhat calm albeit regretful. If the future really did not exist, he was more at peace to know that he was not leaving his loved ones behind, although it was regretful that it meant Kyungsoo never achieved the ideal life he dreamed of.

Whichever it was, Kyungsoo had no way of knowing and certainly, no way of ever returning there. This past was his present now. This was the life he would lead for a second time.

**

Two days after Kyungsoo ended up here in the past, he was still wallowing around at home in despair when Baekhyun come to visit in the afternoon.

Kyungsoo’s father had gone to work, leaving him alone at home. When Kyungsoo heard the door knock, he knew it would be Baekhyun because his father had the keys and never knocked.

Apart from that, those two were the only people Kyungsoo ever talked to anymore after the accident last winter. There was no one else who would even come to visit at home.

Kyungsoo invited Baekhyun inside and offered him warm instant coffee and some dried crackers before moving to Kyungsoo’s room so they could hang out together.

It was a Friday afternoon. Baekhyun only had classes in the morning and had come to Kyungsoo’s place right after.

Kyungsoo no longer went out partying or clubbing on the weekend since Jongdae’s death. Now, he spent his free time at home studying or just lounging around in his room. Baekhyun seemed to have followed suit too and often came over to Kyungsoo’s place to hang out at, instead of spending time with each other in some loud club in Hongdae.

Baekhyun laid down on Kyungsoo’s bed with one foot propped up on his knee, while Kyungsoo was searching through the files on his computer to try and recall what the 2016 Kyungsoo had been up to at this time. He needed to catch up with his past self if he was going to be leading this life now.

“Hey, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun called out, scrolling through social media on his phone, “Why haven’t you replied to my texts in two days? You didn’t even see the texts I sent you. Did you lose your phone or what?”

“I forgot the password actually,” Kyungsoo admitted, looking over his shoulder at Baekhyun who was lazing around on his bed.

“Huh?” Baekhyun was confused, “Did you just wake up one morning and forgot the password to your phone?”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo felt somewhat challenged in a humiliating manner.

“Are you for real?” Baekhyun looked annoyed as he lifted himself up from Kyungsoo’s bed and sat up, demanding, “Give me your phone. I’ll unlock it for you. You should have just told me you forgot it in that case. Did you forget that I know the password too?”

“Well…I…uh didn’t want to bother you,” Kyungsoo came up with an excuse, clearly forgetting how close he and Baekhyun used to be, up to a point where they basically knew each other’s login credentials on most devices.

“You’re not bothering me, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun assured, although still slightly annoyed.

Kyungsoo dived under his desk for his phone, which he had left charging and placed on top of his computer processor case. He then handed it to Baekhyun who shook his head and then proceeded to key in the password correctly.

“Here you go,” Baekhyun said as he handed Kyungsoo’s phone back. Baekhyun then moved to Kyungsoo’s desk and retrieved a pen and some paper lying around to write down the password for Kyungsoo to refer to., “You’re lucky I know your password. Otherwise, you’d probably have to go back to the store and pay money to get the technicians to unlock it for you.”

“Yeah, thank you. I really owe you for this one,” Kyungsoo gleefully replied, somewhat glad that he was at least able to solve a small problem that arose from being thrown back into the past.

“Whatever, just try to remember it next time,” Baekhyun advised, moving back to Kyungsoo’s bed.

With the access back to his phone, Kyungsoo was able to refer to his daily schedule and planner, which was extremely helpful for him to reintegrate back into this life. After all, if he was going to be reliving his past, he at least wanted to do it right.

While Kyungsoo was going through his phone after having it unlocked, Baekhyun decided to ask the question that had been on his mind for a few days now.

Baekhyun was lying down on Kyungsoo’s bed with his head on the pillow as he stared up at the white plaster ceiling when he spoke, “So, why was it that you wanted to see Chanyeol? You seem pretty in a rush at the time. What’s up with that?”

“Oh…that,” Kyungsoo lifted his attention from his phone and towards Baekhyun as he searched for something logical to say, “I wanted to talk to him to uh…apologize to him for you know what happened. I still felt that I needed to do it and he’s a pretty hard man to look for so as you saw, I was in a rush because I didn’t want to lose him again.”

Baekhyun sighed before giving his opinion on the subject, sounding a bit heated up, “Are you still really on that whole ‘apologize to Chanyeol’ thing? How many times have I told you that no matter how much you apologize and how much you grovel at his feet, you cannot force forgiveness out of people. You did as much as you could and besides, you need to stop putting Chanyeol on this pedestal that you have to achieve his forgiveness in order to find your peace.”

Kyungsoo kept quiet, listening to every word Baekhyun told him, even with a slight worry still lingering at the back of his mind.

He probably had this conversation with Baekhyun before. He couldn’t remember the exact words Baekhyun said but it was probably something like this, Kyungsoo had a hunch.

“Sorry,” Baekhyun apologized, resting his hand on his belly, “I didn’t mean to lecture you like that. I just want the best for you. God, I sound like an old man.”

Kyungsoo chuckled at the irony of the remark, “No, it’s fine. You are not wrong.”

Kyungsoo moved from his chair and to the edge of his bed where Baekhyun was lying down on. If Baekhyun had been sitting up, Kyungsoo would have hugged him. But since that wasn’t the case, Kyungsoo decided to pat Baekhyun on the shoulder.

“Thank you for being my voice of reason,” Kyungsoo voiced out, sincerely grateful.

“Why not?” Baekhyun glanced over at Kyungsoo and then laughed a bit.

It didn’t even occur to Kyungsoo how much he actually missed Baekhyun until now. They had been so good friends in university but slowly lost touch once they got jobs and Kyungsoo started his own family.

Kyungsoo didn’t have many close friends as a working adult. His family was practically all he had and all he could turn to in time of a need. Looking back in retrospect, it made Kyungsoo appreciate Baekhyun even more.

In a specific sense, perhaps, coming back to the past wasn’t so bad after all.

“Hey, what time is your shift tomorrow?” Baekhyun asked, coming out of nowhere or at least that was what it seemed to Kyungsoo.

“My what shift?” Kyungsoo was clueless, trying hard to remember something he was obviously supposed to know.

“The shift to your part-time job of course,” Baekhyun explained, blatantly.

“Oh shit,” Kyungsoo cursed, suddenly understanding what all those times during the weekends on his phone scheduler app meant. He only now remembered that he had a part-time job during the weekends at a family restaurant in a busy mall.

**

The next day on a Saturday, on the 29th of October 2016, Kyungsoo had to work the lunch to the closing shift.

He remembered the restaurant he worked in and in which mall it was but he hardly remembered the name of most, if not all, of his co-workers. Thankfully, they all wore name tags over their uniform aprons, which was convenient for Kyungsoo’s case.

Here, he earned a measly 6000 won per hour, a far cry from the over ten times that amount he made as a tenured college professor.

To him, it felt like he had gone down in the rungs of his life. Just when Kyungsoo thought that these days were over, he was made to relive them. But Kyungsoo sucked it up because if he was going to live this life, he needed this job for extra pocket money.

All that money he saved up and earned as a college professor did not exist here. Now, Kyungsoo also did not have the financial support of a spouse who earned good money and came from a wealthy background.

It was also important he did not detract too much from the course of events of the future, in case that changing it up too much would drastically alter his future.

For the first half of his shift, Kyungsoo was assigned to waiting and serving tables. It was still the same old basic taking up orders and serving the dishes, something Kyungsoo didn’t forget how to perform.

Although, he did spend a good few minutes looking at the menu and trying to refresh his memory at what the place served and did not serve. Just in case some customer came in asking for recommendations and he found himself clueless about it when he supposedly had been working there for a while.

For the second half of his shift, Kyungsoo was told to stand outside the restaurant to greet customers and help them find tables.

While Kyungsoo had been busy during the peak dinner hour, it was much quieter now. The mall would be closing in a bit over an hour and there weren’t many people left around either.

Kyungsoo was just standing outside the restaurant, complete in his bright yellow and orange uniform with a cap on his head and the menu in his hand, which he was supposed to hand to a customer when they walked in.

Whenever someone passed by the restaurant and looked in his direction, Kyungsoo had to smile and bow to them, asking them if they would like to come and dine inside. But he was too tired for that now.

Kyungsoo was just mindlessly staring at the fluorescent lighting of pizza place opposite from the restaurant he worked at, thinking about his previous life in the future when he heard someone say the name “Chanyeol”.

Kyungsoo’s head instantly whipped sideways to find the source of the voice. It wasn’t exactly a rare name but because of the significance of that name to Kyungsoo, he would almost always look to see.

By pure chance, it was indeed the same Chanyeol whose name was being called out. Not far outside the restaurant, in the mall, a woman in a dress was holding her daughter’s hand and was waving towards Chanyeol who was coming their way.

Kyungsoo recognized the woman with Chanyeol. Her name is Heejo and she is Chanyeol’s cousin on his mother’s side. In the future, she is Kyungsoo’s cousin-in-law but not now she wasn’t.

For a short moment there, Kyungsoo’s breath stopped. He was still very much in love with Chanyeol even if they weren’t together here and just a simple glance of him eve from afar was enough to make Kyungsoo’s heart waver.

In fact, Kyungsoo even felt somewhat excited and his heartbeat beginning to race just by Chanyeol’s presence. Even if Chanyeol being here could potentially be a problem for him.

When Chanyeol reached Heejo and her daughter, they appeared to be discussing something out of Kyungsoo’s earshot. He just hoped that they weren’t discussing where to eat or had the same restaurant Kyungsoo worked at mind.

Kyungsoo knew that Heejo did not know about him yet but Chanyeol surely did. Kyungsoo began to worry if Chanyeol spotted him there, if he should be hiding or making himself less obvious. Kyungsoo remembered nothing of ever seeing Chanyeol at work. This was certainly something new to him that exclusively only happened in this version of the past.

It was just a guess but Kyungsoo could feel how annoyed Chanyeol would be to see his face right now. After all, if Kyungsoo was going to plan to court Chanyeol again so they could be married in the future, he had to make Chanyeol hate him less than he already had.

Kyungsoo had half the mind to lift the menu booklet to his face to obscure himself from view and he did just that. It just didn’t work right when Heejo, her young daughter and Chanyeol walked up outside the restaurant, looking exactly as if they had decided to eat there.

It was too late for Kyungsoo to feign a stomachache either and run inside and get another co-worker to cover for him while he pretended to need the toilet badly. Heejo was already in front of the restaurant and asking Kyungsoo if the kitchen was still open for orders.

The kitchen was still indeed open for another 45 minutes but Kyungsoo could not answer that to Heejo. He was just stunned, his head tilted upwards to look at the taller Chanyeol who was glaring back at him. Chanyeol looked equally as surprised as he was being avoidant.

Kyungsoo’s tongue was tied in front of Chanyeol. He wanted Chanyeol back so bad but he didn’t know the right words to say to achieve that. Even with Chanyeol right in front of him and this being such bad timing, Kyungsoo felt so helpless.

“Uh…yeah, the kitchen is still open,” Kyungsoo managed to say something quickly to Heejo, even if he was looking over Heejo’s shoulder and right at Chanyeol instead.

Before Heejo could say that she wanted a table for three, Chanyeol quickly interjected.

“- _noona_ , let’s eat somewhere else instead. I think I know a better place somewhere,” Chanyeol mentioned, very obviously avoiding eye-contact with Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo wanted to protest and shove their promotion menu their way, in an effort to make them dine there but Chanyeol didn’t give Kyungsoo the opportunity to put himself in between the conversation.

In the end, Heejo was convinced and she bowed to Kyungsoo saying that they had decided to go to a different restaurant.

As Heejo and her daughter were walking off to the place Chanyeol had told them to go to, Chanyeol stayed behind to have a word with Kyungsoo.

“I didn’t know you worked here now,” Chanyeol commented.

“It’s funny you say that because I didn’t remember working here until yesterday either,” Kyungsoo dryly chuckled, easily falling back into a conversation with Chanyeol due to different circumstances.

“Whatever. It’s not like I care,” Chanyeol scoffed.

“I don’t expect you to,” Kyungsoo responded as a reminder to himself.

“Look, I don’t care what you do with your life but I don’t want to see you with my friends or my family. You are crazy and I don’t want you afflicting them with your misfortune either. Do you understand?” Chanyeol warned, sternly.

If anything, Chanyeol's height and large build made him seem even more imposing against Kyungsoo’s below-average frame. This same Chanyeol who used to make him feel safe and protected was also the same Chanyeol here leaving him feeling intimidated. 

“Y-yeah, I understand,” Kyungsoo’s voice croaked as he looked down to his shoes, unable to face Chanyeol, while he clutched onto the menu booklets tightly to his chest.

“Good,” Chanyeol almost hissed at Kyungsoo before stomping off.

“Thank you, please come again,” Kyungsoo forced himself to smile and say in his customer service voice, almost tearing up from being treated so coldly by the same man who meant the world to him.

Chanyeol, of course, did not say anything in return. 

Later, on the last bus home after his shift, Kyungsoo rested his head against the window and watched the nighttime cityscape pass him by. The bus was almost empty save for him and maybe a few other passengers. It was quiet, allowing his thoughts to be filled with how the future Chanyeol and his children were doing.

It was late at night now. Had the twins showered and done their homework? Were they already in bed? How was Chanyeol keeping up? Was he alone in his study drinking coffee again at night?

Kyungsoo wondered if he could possibly ever return to the future or ensure it would happen again. He had a plan now which he believed might work. It was his best bet at getting Chanyeol to stop hating him for starters.

For the next month, he would try avoiding Chanyeol as much as possible even if they ran into each other. Hopefully, it would give Chanyeol some time to clear up his head without being filled with negative thoughts of Kyungsoo.

Then, on Chanyeol’s birthday when he was alone, Kyungsoo planned to swoop in right there and then and set things straight just as he did so in the past.


	5. 1st- 27th November 2016

For the following month until Chanyeol’s birthday, Kyungsoo attempted to get used to reliving his student life and return to studying and completing his thesis at a “human rate”; to make it seem like he really was doing this for the first time and not as an overqualified P.h.D holder.

Kyungsoo had about two years or roughly four semesters to finish his thesis, which he could probably achieve in a few months now. He was tempted to research on a different topic and make his thesis different than it was but Kyungsoo had to remind himself that he wasn’t here to change the past, he was here to relive it and made sure the future stayed the exact same way it was supposed to be.

Even though Kyungsoo didn’t exactly remember all over 50,000 words of his thesis word by word, he remembered what the contents were, what his general references were and overall how the final product was supposed to look.

Now, Kyungsoo was even given the chance to make improvements on his master’s thesis which he wished he had done differently. He also knew how to better properly manage his time between his job, research and social duties; having learned from the mistakes of his past.

Therefore, he had a major head-start, which eased his transition back into his younger life. Even if it was merely a consolation to losing his family and the love of his life.

For once, Kyungsoo was grateful that he wasn’t blasted back into the past of his undergraduate days because he didn’t know if he was able to be taking five to six subjects per semester.

He no longer had lectures or quizzes and the likes to keep up with. He only had small seminar classes about three times a week between other students such as him, where they were to present and discuss their findings with their peers and professors.

It was strange at first for Kyungsoo to be walking into class and sitting at the student desk instead of the professor’s desk upfront. He was glad he didn’t make that mistake on the first day of his return to the past because that would have been embarrassing.

It felt a bit awkward for him too when his classmates whose name he couldn’t quite remember came up to him calling him “Kyungsoo” because he was so used to being addressed as “Dr. Do” in the future.

In the future, Kyungsoo became a co-worker to his former professors and started addressing them as “ _sunbaenim”_. While here, he had to constantly mentally remind himself to not slip up and make sure he appropriately address them as his teacher.

Kyungsoo did almost made a mistake one afternoon after class. His feet had routinely brought him to the staff lounge where he would usually spend his time in-between classes, drinking coffee, eating snacks and catching up with his fellow faculty members.

In front of the staff lounge, Kyungsoo then suddenly remembered he wasn’t a professor anymore and students like him were supposed to be hanging out at the crowded resource center attached to the library instead.

Luckily no one was around to see him at the time and before he could be embarrassed, Kyungsoo walked away as if nothing had happened.

Kyungsoo found an empty table that could sit around four people in the resource center and placed his bag pack down on the empty seat before texting Baekhyun where he was. Since they had agreed to meet up and study together. He then went hunting the bookshelves for the materials he needed.

After retrieving a few books, Kyungsoo returned to his seat to find Baekhyun already sitting there at the table, with his bulky gaming laptop out and clicking away at it. Knowing Baekhyun, he was probably already playing games instead of working on his projects. 

“Yo!” Baekhyun greeted, nibbling on the strings of the black hoodie jacket he was wearing. Baekhyun was also wearing a pair of black jeans and white sneakers.

Seeing Baekhyun, Kyungsoo looked down to his own attire and realized that he too was wearing the exact same outfit combination except with black sneakers. Kyungsoo sighed innately at the fashion choices of his college-going 23-year-old self but this was all he had in his wardrobe at this time.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo greeted back, placing the books down on the desk and taking his seat opposite from Baekhyun.

As Kyungsoo was taking out his own laptop from his bag, Baekhyun spoke.

“Oh, I ran into Chanyeol at the elevator this morning on my way to class,” Baekhyun looked up from his laptop screen to tell Kyungsoo that.

“Okay…and?” Kyungsoo expected Baekhyun to tell him something more.

“Nothing else. I don’t even think he saw me there but I just wanted to let you know because you seem pretty interested in him lately. Last week when I was driving you to class and we ran into him at the parking lots, you had a smile on your face for almost half the day,” Baekhyun clarified, diverting his attention back to his laptop

“Did I?” Kyungsoo questioned, directed more towards himself than anyone else.

“Hmm…yeah,” Baekhyun answered, leaning back on his chair and then noticing the books Kyungsoo had picked up from the shelves, “Whoa, are you seriously reading a book in _hanja?_ I thought you said you were still at an elementary school level in reading that. _”_

Kyungsoo froze, afraid his cover had been blown. It completely slipped his mind that his 23-year-old self was not supposed to be fluent in reading _hanja_ or at understanding Mandarin at that point. It was a skill he only started to take seriously in graduate school and finally somewhat mastered while pursuing his P.h.D

“It’s for practice,” Kyungsoo stammered, coming up with a white lie, “I can’t get better at it if I don’t train myself to read harder books in _hanja_. You know how my field is based a lot on Chinese history too. It will also help me when I eventually move to learn Japanese too since they share almost the same writing system.”

“That’s smart. You’re smart,” Baekhyun praised, nodding his head in affirmation, “Maybe I should learn Chinese or Japanese too. You could even teach me because I heard that teaching others is a good method of learning too.”

“Of course,” Kyungsoo snickered, wondering now how he was going to pretend to not fully understand the books he was going to attempt reading and taking notes from.

**

In the following weeks of November leading up to Chanyeol’s birthday, Kyungsoo was lucky enough to be busy to be distracted from the reality of being stuck in the past. He was beginning to see the benefit of being a more stable, older man than his arguably volatile early twenties self.

On top of studies and his part-time job, he was also busy scheduling meetings and consultations with acclaimed researchers to reestablish connections with them, which he would need in the future in a field where peer accreditation was the bane of one’s existence.

At least now, Kyungsoo knew which specific researcher he could go to and get along with. Instead of the trial and error method, he approached with in the past, which had left him with various opinions on the type of people to avoid in his field. That itself could even be a major research topic of its own. 

Kyungsoo was also put in charge of arranging a research field trip with his classmates. Kyungsoo noticed how his classmates seemed to like him better now, perhaps because he seemed friendlier was and more approachable with his helpful “teacher-like” mannerisms.

Not that Kyungsoo blamed them for it. Because when he was first attending graduate school, he was still an avoidant and angsty young adult who was trying to cope badly after a tragedy. Even the future Kyungsoo wouldn’t have wanted to deal with his younger self, which made it seem even more of a miracle to Kyungsoo as to how Chanyeol was able to fall in love with him.

Kyungsoo made sure to remember his father’s medical check-up and that he would not miss it. On the day itself, Kyungsoo dragged his father out of bed at six in the morning and instructed him to call in late for work that day.

Choongsun was the type of person who liked telling people he felt fit and healthy, even when he didn’t. He was also the type of person to overestimate his actual health state, hence why he didn’t feel the need to see the doctor or get checkups when he started experiencing chest pains and tightness of breath in the few months leading up to his fatal heart attack.

Knowing this, Kyungsoo made sure to be right beside his father during the medical checkup, in case he tried to bail and go home. Kyungsoo was not going to let his father die prematurely before his actual time if he could do something to prevent that now.

At the end of the checkup, the doctor announced that Choongsun needed to lose some weight and cut down on smoking but his overall healthy being rather alright for someone his age.

Hearing that, Kyungsoo made sure his father would see the dietitian which the doctor had referred him to. Kyungsoo even signed his father up for an aerobics class and a gym membership with the money he earned from his part-time job.

Only now, did Kyungsoo realize that his past self had been too self-centered and caught up with his own problems to realize what the people around him were going through. A part of him was glad he was given this opportunity a second time around.

Then, once Kyungsoo thought he had mostly figured out how to handle his studies, his social life and his duties as a son, he thought it was time for him to finally try and progress his relationship with Chanyeol.

Chanyeol’s birthday on the 27th of November fell on a Saturday that year. Kyungsoo asked to work the opening shift that day so he could be free in the evening.

Kyungsoo had ordered for the same birthday cake from the same bakery beforehand. After work, all he needed to do was pick up the cake and wait outside Chanyeol’s home until around nine at night, which was around the same time he was there fourteen years in the past of his future self.

Kyungsoo had even dressed in the same clothes he thought he was wearing on the exact day. He really needed it to work so badly and for Chanyeol to finally realize his feelings that night. Kyungsoo believed that doing everything the same way was bound to yield him the same results as it was proven to in the past.

A taxi dropped off Kyungsoo a few houses away from Chanyeol’s home at around eight at night. Then, he waited for almost an hour, squatting in a bush outside in the cold while balancing the cake box on his knee. Kyungsoo needed to pretend that he had just arrived when he showed up.

At least, Kyungsoo was warmly dressed for the weather and that the cold would actually keep the cake fresh for a longer time.

Kyungsoo wanted it to seem natural too so he didn’t immediately pounce out of the bush with the cake box under his arm and smash the intercom doorbell button on Chanyeol’s gate at nine o’clock sharp. He actually waited until it was a minute past nine to do just that.

Just as he remembered, the house helper was the one who first answered the intercom and saw Kyungsoo’s face over the security camera feed. Kyungsoo announced to her that he was there to see Chanyeol and she went over to look for Chanyeol to tell him that a “friend” named Kyungsoo was there for him.

Like it had happened in the past, Chanyeol immediately told his house helper to send Kyungsoo away the moment Chanyeol heard Kyungsoo’s name being mentioned. However, Chanyeol was stirred by the urge to walk up to the security camera monitor feed in his house to see Kyungsoo outside in the cold with what was very obviously a cake box under his arm.

In the past Kyungsoo had experienced once, Chanyeol was overwhelmed by the loneliness he felt on being without his family and friend on his birthday, which led to him letting Kyungsoo inside the house and eventually his life.

But this time, the past wasn’t exactly repeating itself. It was an entirely new course of events in a separate timeline than what Kyungsoo knew, perhaps because he hadn’t been exactly doing things the exact same way. He had already deviated from the path and was now being led into a new timeline where things were different.

He would only realize this now.

Instead of letting Kyungsoo inside, Chanyeol went to his room to grab his coat and told his house helper that he’d go outside to send Kyungsoo away instead.

Chanyeol stomped out of his house, down the driveway and towards the front gate which he swung open furiously to come face to face with Kyungsoo.

It was colder the late it got and had even begun to snow flurries. Honestly, Kyungsoo couldn’t even remember if it had snowed on the same day fourteen years ago. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. 

Under the falling snow and the glow of the incandescent lights outside, Kyungsoo smiled when he saw Chanyeol who in stark contrast had a scowl on his face instead.

“What are you doing here at my house?” Chanyeol snapped, confrontational, “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from me?”

“Yes, I know you did,” Kyungsoo replied, still feeling somewhat confident, “But it’s your birthday today. Facebook told me about it! I thought you’d want some company. I know how difficult these things can get so I bought you a cake and well- Happy Birthday!” Kyungsoo gleefully said out loud, presenting the cake box towards Chanyeol in both hands.

Chanyeol sighed and shook his head before calming himself down and continuing, “No, Kyungsoo. I do not want to spend my birthday with you. In fact, this would even make it worse than it has to be. Please go home. I’ll call you a taxi.”

“No!” Kyungsoo protested, startled by the sudden change of events that certainly did not take place in the version of his past, “I mean no harm. I came here to make things right by you. Don’t you even want the cake? It's in your favorite flavor. You always liked chocolate.”

Chanyeol was very obviously holding himself back from another outburst and still managed to placidly compose himself to continue talking rationally to Kyungsoo, “You can keep your cake, Kyungsoo. Please leave before I call the police on you. We don’t have to go that far. I have no idea what is going on in your head but I really do not want to spend time with you today. I know you still believe some fantasy where we end up together and get married but this is reality. You are trying too hard but none of that will happen. You need to live in the real world. Stop lying to yourself!”

“But-,” before Kyungsoo could object any further, Chanyeol had grasped onto his upper arm.

Chanyeol didn’t want to physically hurt Kyungsoo but he didn’t want Kyungsoo around either. He attempted to drag Kyungsoo away from the front of his gate, outside under the snow. Stubbornly, Kyungsoo planted his feet firm on the ground in an act of defiance as he continued to hold the cake box between his hands.

One time, Chanyeol yanked on Kyungsoo’s arm a bit too hard which loosened his grip on the box. The box slipped out of Kyungsoo’s hold and tumbled down onto the cemented pavement, expelling the cake out from the box too.

Kyungsoo watched in horror as his entire day’s wages became a mess of sponge cake and icing on the ground. Chanyeol seemed a bit surprised too but he did nothing to console Kyungsoo’s grief, not even when Kyungsoo knelt to the ground to attempt salvaging the cake he wanted to eat with Chanyeol.

Chanyeol heaved his shoulders, feeling a bit bad and annoyed at Kyungsoo at the same time.

Meanwhile, Kyungsoo went into an almost emotional breakdown. It wasn’t just about the cake. It was a lot more than that. The cake was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol muttered under his breath, tucking his hands into his coat pockets before deciding to leave Kyungsoo there and go back inside.

Kyungsoo felt humiliated. He wanted to get up and run away, even if it was to a home without his husband and children. He just wanted to remove himself from that situation.

But he didn’t want to be irresponsible either. With his gloved hands, Kyungsoo scooped up the cake and icing from the pavement and back into the box.

Then, he made the long walk of shame back home, with dirtied gloves, the crumpled box in his hands and his even broken heart as he was pelted by snow and the cold harsh wind.

It was the first snow of winter. If according to folklore, being with Chanyeol during the first snow would have meant that they got to be together forever.

However, while Kyungsoo got to be with the one he loved the most, he wasn’t loved in return.

Kyungsoo later got home and curled up in bed to find out that Chanyeol had blocked him from all social media.

None of this had happened in the past. Kyungsoo didn’t know what to do now that his advantage of hindsight didn’t seem to apply in this unprecedented course of events.

When Kyungsoo realized he no longer knew the “right” way to ensure that Chanyeol would fall in love with him and that they would have children together, Kyungsoo panicked and wasn’t able to calm down.

But he wasn’t ready to give up. Not just yet.


	6. 28th November 2016- 16th February 2017

After the fierce rejection he received from Chanyeol on the latter’s 24th birthday, Kyungsoo decided to set out to find the scroll he would buy in the future.

Kyungsoo had solid reasons to believe the scroll was at fault, that reading it had unleashed some sort of unexplained mystic power which ended him in this miserable past. Maybe, if he could find it again here in the past, it could at least give him give a lead to solving this horrid reality he had to live in now.

If it was any consolation, Kyungsoo at least remembered the address of the man who would sell him the scroll. It was just off a busy road and beside a convenience store, which Kyungsoo had gone to several times. The landmarks surrounding the house were what made it stick in Kyungsoo’s memory the most.

On the evening of the day after Chanyeol’s birthday, Kyungsoo went to the said location. While he did find the convenience store, a few shop buildings, and a small park; there was not a single house in a block radius. Kyungsoo was sure he didn’t make a mistake and that this was the address of the man who sold him the scroll- lived in.

There was, however, a construction site for houses that were not yet complete. Kyungsoo walked around the area to find other houses but there were only apartment blocks or shophouses. The house of the scroll seller was a detached unit but there were none in the perimeter which had been fully constructed.

Kyungsoo was baffled and even more grief-stricken to learn that the house did not exist yet in this time, which was probably the only lead he had left to find this scroll.

In the coming days, Kyungsoo looked up public records, registries, and even social media for the man who sold him the scroll. It didn’t help that Kyungsoo only remembered the man’s surname, which was extremely common.

Kyungsoo tried calling the construction company to inquire about the buyer of the house still in construction, but he was even more disappointed to learn that the house had no buyer yet as it had not gone on the market. The completion date was set to be next year in the summer and it was still a bit more time before someone came around to purchase the house.

Kyungsoo didn’t know if he could wait that long for he was already supposed to be pregnant and dating Chanyeol in the summer of 2017.

Kyungsoo felt as if he had doomed himself. 

**

During Kyungsoo’s first thesis assessment in the fall, he received praises and good words from his professors and research supervisors. He was only told to make small amends or changes in his thesis so far which had now amounted up to over 12,000 words.

This was certainly better than the previous assessment Kyungsoo went through in another version of his past. At least his studies had it going, even if his personal romantic life was a mess.

The fall semester ended in the second week of December and winter break began. Kyungsoo no longer had the opportunity to accidentally run into Chanyeol on campus or even catch a distant glance at him.

Those small unplanned encounters were what kept Kyungsoo’s hope going, that he will be able to move into the future he had achieved once. Kyungsoo still wasn’t used to the idea that the love of his life detested even being in the same room as him.

Out of desperation, Kyungsoo did make fake social media accounts to befriend Chanyeol online. However, Chanyeol seemed to be wary and never accepted friend or follow requests from people he didn’t know.

Kyungsoo was then stuck with borrowing Baekhyun’s phone when the latter came over, so he could look at Chanyeol’s posts because luckily Baekhyun was still friends or following Chanyeol on social media.

Now that he was on break, Kyungsoo was less distracted by how busy he used to be. Now that he had more time alone to worry and fret about everything going wrong in his life.

Kyungsoo learned how terrible it was to be alone in his room all day. Because all he could think about was how he was failing at securing his future with Chanyeol and at how he would never be able to possibly make things right.

It only made him stuck in an incessant and continuous loop of worry and fret, which in turn led to even more self-deprecating thoughts and doubt.

Eventually, even sleep no longer became an escape from his anguish, because he would be haunted with dreams of what he had lost and what he failed to achieve.

Kyungsoo asked for more shift hours so he could work and distract himself from his unwanted thoughts. Kyungsoo thought that at least, he could be making some money off of his misery.

The manager at the restaurant was willing to give it to Kyungsoo until that too backfired against him in some way. 

Kyungsoo worked at a family restaurant and hence the name, the customers were mostly families who came in to dine together.

One on occasion, a couple with young twin sons came in to eat there, sitting in Kyungsoo’s section. Kyungsoo had to fight back his emotions and later run into the toilet to cry after they had left because he was painfully reminded of his children whom he could no longer hold.

Kyungsoo could not bear to see couples, especially gay couples who reminded him of what he lost. Seeing families with children was even harder because all Kyungsoo could see was himself in that situation, except that he wasn’t.

After that, Kyungsoo became avoidant from interactions. Even the sound of his phone ringing from a simple text message was enough to make Kyungsoo jump in surprise, leaving him hyperventilating even minutes after.

He made up excuses and went against his own words of wanting to spend more time with his father and Baekhyun.

When Choongsun got home after a day of work, Kyungsoo would lock himself up in his room and lie, saying that he was not hungry when Choongsun asked to eat dinner together. When Baekhyun asked to hang out together, Kyungsoo lied and said he was busy.

Baekhyun was more persistent though and there were times Kyungsoo could not avoid not hanging out with Baekhyun. In that case, Kyungsoo had to force a smile and lie that he was not troubled by anything, even when Baekhyun asked if he was feeling okay.

If only Kyungsoo could tell someone about this problem, it would probably help ease off his burden even by a bit. It was not as if Kyungsoo didn’t try. He did tell Chanyeol about it but it only fell to deaf ears.

Now, Kyungsoo was too scared to even try again, even if he did consider telling Baekhyun about it.

Unable to sleep at night, Kyungsoo began taking sleeping pills even if he knew how bad it was for his health and condition.

But he still woke up tired and every morning he found himself still stuck in the past, a small part inside of him died a little.

Kyungsoo found a picture of Chanyeol in a group photo on a mutual friend’s Instagram page. He printed the picture on a photo printing booth in a mall. Kyungsoo then placed the picture on his bedside table for him to look at whenever he felt lonely.

Kyungsoo had even begun looking up artists online, to see if there were any whom he could pay to draw a portrait of his children based on his descriptions of them.

Because if Kyungsoo couldn’t have Chanyeol, then he could at least have his children, even if that sounded equally impossible. He was willing to bargain though.

But Kyungsoo was hesitant because he felt partially disgusted at himself for the idea of it. He felt wrong and that he was being intrusive if he were to hire someone to draw a picture of his children who didn’t exist; children whom he conceived with a man who wanted nothing to do with him.

Anyone in Chanyeol’s shoes would be horrified to find out that the person they wanted to avoid the most had fantasized having children with you, until a point of even paying someone to draw a portrait of those non-existent children.

Every night before the sleeping pills kicked in and lulled him to sleep, Kyungsoo closed his eyes and wished very hard that this wall a bad dream and that he would wake up again in the future. That was never the case though.

**

By the time Kyungsoo realized it again, it was February and a few weeks away from the start of the spring semester. He was supposed to already be dating Chanyeol by now and in two months' time, he was supposed to be pregnant.

Since the winter break began, he had not seen nor heard from Chanyeol outside of social media through Baekhyun’s phone.

Baekhyun had been on vacation in Southeast Asia with his family since the Lunar New Year holidays. Without him, Kyungsoo felt a tad bit lonelier, although Baekhyun did constantly text Kyungsoo, asking if he wanted screenshots of Chanyeol’s latest social media updates.

Kyungsoo was very grateful for that. At least he had Baekhyun still, Kyungsoo thought.

While Kyungsoo was not completely over Chanyeol nor had he completely abandoned his plan to make the latter fall in love with him all over again, he was simply putting it off until he came up with a more solid and feasible plan.

It was easy for Kyungsoo to say he was alright and feeling better because distance from Chanyeol seemed to work to soothe Kyungsoo’s pain. But Kyungsoo wasn’t too lucky, especially in this timeline.

Before the spring semester began, Kyungsoo still needed to come to campus a few times to meet up with his professors regarding his thesis or any documents of release which he would need for his research.

The campus was quiet and less populated at these times of the year. It was easier to find free space at the library, computer labs and even at the cafeteria. There were no lunch or in-between class rush hours where the hallways and corridors were packed and busy.

Kyungsoo found serenity in the silence. As a professor who was at campus almost every day even during breaks, these moments of calm were a bittersweet memento of the life he had unwillingly left behind.

By noon, Kyungsoo was already ready to go home from campus but he wanted to wait a bit more. Before then, Kyungsoo decided to visit his favorite study area at the corner of one of the buildings on campus.

The tables and chairs there were in separate booths and Kyungsoo liked the feeling of privacy. On top of that, because it was snowing outside, Kyungsoo found it calming to sit beside the huge glass windows and watch the snowfall outside while he studied.

When he and Chanyeol were dating while still students, they used to come here often too for a study date. Kyungsoo had fond memories of sitting right up against Chanyeol and leaning his shoulder on his then future husband.

But Kyungsoo’s favorite spot to study also happened to be Chanyeol’s too. After all, if they had nothing in common, they wouldn’t have ended up together in the future of another time. As a postgraduate student like Kyungsoo, of course Chanyeol had business to do around campus even during semester breaks too. 

When Kyungsoo realized there was someone in his favorite seat and that person was Chanyeol, it was too late for him to turn around.

Chanyeol already saw Kyungsoo coming and he dropped the pen in his hand the exact moment their eyes locked even from a good three to four meters away.

They exchanged no words but Chanyeol’s expression was as if to tell Kyungsoo to back off and leave. Only now, simply mesmerized by getting to look at Chanyeol in person for the first time in months, Kyungsoo realized how absolutely still in love he was.

Kyungsoo was definitely not okay, no matter how much he thought he was.

Just barely able to collect himself, Kyungsoo turned around to walk off and leave. But barely a few steps in, Kyungsoo was hit by the realization that was severely behind schedule in how his life was supposed to play out. Even if he did realize now that things were not how he remembered them to be.

In fact, looking back, Kyungsoo didn’t think he had actually gotten anywhere in his relationship with Chanyeol. It was still the same, perhaps even worse.

Kyungsoo believed that if he kept listening to Chanyeol to stay away and leave whenever they were in the vicinity of each other, nothing would ever have the opportunity to blossom between them.

This time, Kyungsoo decided to listen to himself.

He turned back and walked towards the table beside the large glass window where Chanyeol was sitting. Assertively, Kyungsoo threw his bag onto the empty seat in the booth, opposite from Chanyeol.

Then, Kyungsoo sat himself down, much to Chanyeol’s chagrin.

Chanyeol was stunned, rendered speechless with his laptop and notebook open in front of him. Chanyeol grabbed for his phone on the desk and placed it somewhere on his lap, beneath the table out of sight.

As snow fell outside, Kyungsoo boldly asked, “Do you want to go out on a date with me?”, mimicking a persuasive tone that politicians would use to rile up audiences at a voter rally.

Chanyeol was still unable to answer. It seemed as if he didn’t know what to do himself too.

Kyungsoo sighed at Chanyeol’s lack of response as he muttered, “I understand why you hate me so much but if you keep telling me to fuck off and leave whenever we meet, there is no way we can ever move on from where we are at now. You really are not giving me an opportunity.”

“An opportunity for what?” Chanyeol finally responded.

“So we can date, of course! I understand that I look like a madman in your eyes but I really came from a future where we have kids and got married. You know, I’m supposed to be pregnant in May with your children and we’re supposed to be dating now. If you never go out with me, if you never date me and never have sex with me, how is that supposed to happen?” Kyungsoo attested, frustrated and open about his feelings for once.

“You want me to what- have sex with you?” Chanyeol spat, taken aback.

“Yeah, why?” Kyungsoo didn’t seem to see the fault in the choice of his words, “If you’re not going to marry me in this world, you might at least help give me my children so I won’t be too lonely.”

“I can’t have children with you, Kyungsoo, and I certainly don’t want to have sex with you. In fact, I don’t want you at all, I hope you understand,” Chanyeol shook his head, refusing, as he proceeded to pack up his things.

Kyungsoo gasped at Chanyeol’s constant rejection of him. It was no longer surprising at this point, but it was still nevertheless, painful.

If he did nothing, Chanyeol would never come to him. But if he did something, Chanyeol would only be driven further away. Kyungsoo could almost see his entire life slipping out of his hold and out of his sight, despite how hard he tried to prevent it.

What else was he supposed to do? Kyungsoo didn’t know. Was accepting that they could not be together, the only real option here?

“Wait! Don’t go,” Kyungsoo leaped out of the seat, attempting to halt Chanyeol who had packed up to leave.

Chanyeol didn’t say anything. He only shook his head, avoiding Kyungsoo’s gaze.

“Chanyeol, you can’t leave me! I love you,” Kyungsoo blurted out, loud enough this time for the other students in the study area to turn their heads and look their way.

Chanyeol inhaled, taking a deep breath, “I’m sorry, Kyungsoo. I don’t.”

Those simple words hurt Kyungsoo more than any other pain he had felt in the past. 

**

Not two days later, Kyungsoo woke up to an urgent and confidential email from the university’s administration.

Apparently, Chanyeol had recorded their conversation in the study area. He didn’t want to bring it to law and enforcement, instead deciding to report it to the dean of Kyungsoo’s faculty.

Chanyeol was now accusing Kyungsoo of targeted harassment. Kyungsoo was summoned to the university for questioning and if found at fault, he faced suspension or even expulsion for it.

Kyungsoo did not deny the allegations because he knew that in Chanyeol’s eyes, he was the harasser. He accepted that he was at fault.

Kyungsoo was then suspended indefinitely from the university, threatened with expulsion if he ever approached Chanyeol in any form or manner again.

Kyungsoo’s studies were the last string of hope he held onto in an effort to achieve the future. It was almost impossible now to have Chanyeol marry him and for him to have children. Now to Kyungsoo, it seemed as if gaining his postgraduate degree was also impossible now.

At home after receiving the news of his suspension, Kyungsoo threw out all the clothes from his closet, before stuffing himself inside there in the small, dark and cramped space.

Where he screamed and cried his heart out without wanting to be overheard by anyone else.

Kyungsoo tried remembering his children’s voices and their faces in an effort to hold onto his sanity, but he then realized that he barely remembered how they looked or sounded like now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how bad can it get heh


	7. 8th March 2017- 7th April 2017

Baekhyun did not discover about what happened to Kyungsoo until he returned from his family vacation in late February, a week before the start of the spring semester.

Even so, Kyungsoo kept mum about the whole situation and it took more prying on Baekhyun’s behalf to finally get him to talk.

Kyungsoo could tell Baekhyun was disappointed in him, judging by the look on his face when Kyungsoo finally broke the news of what he had done and what had happened after.

Baekhyun didn’t scold Kyungsoo though. He was patient and avoided talking about the whole suspension and Chanyeol altogether. Instead, he focused more on Kyungsoo himself and how to move forward from this predicament.

Kyungsoo continued going to his job even though he had no classes and was put on hold from his studies. Kyungsoo started to envision himself possibly working at that family restaurant for a long time and even heavily considering the idea of applying to become a full-time staff, should he never be able to return to university. Maybe, he could eventually become the store manager one day, Kyungsoo thought. This waiter job was all he had now, possibly.

It was a complete shift from the future Kyungsoo came from but he learned that he had to accept that things weren’t going to be the same anymore.

Perhaps, he might even meet someone else and start a family with a person that wasn’t Chanyeol. There were, after all, literally billions of other people he could go for.

Kyungsoo reckoned he could learn to love with someone else and be maybe be equally as happy like he used to be.

Maybe he was really sent into the past to lead a different life for some reason. It didn’t mean that he had to be sad and miserable while he was here though.

Giving up on Chanyeol was one of the hardest things he ended up doing. But it was not yet defeat, because Kyungsoo was choosing himself above everything else. Kyungsoo had even cut the picture of Chanyeol he used to bring to sleep with, in an effort to slowly forget Chanyeol.

There was no use beating himself up over someone who probably wouldn’t even spare him a second thought.

Now that Kyungsoo was barred from being on campus, Baekhyun made more efforts to meet Kyungsoo at home or at his workplace, since Baekhyun was the only one of the two who still had a car and a valid driving license.

Kyungsoo never replaced the car he lost in the accident and never appealed to have his driver’s license suspension to be repealed too. He would only do it several years later after he had children in a different future.

Kyungsoo’s daily routine when he wasn’t working was sleeping at almost dawn and waking up at noon. He would then spend most of his day still in his pajamas and still in bed, playing games or watching videos on his phone. He was mostly unfunctional outside of work.

During the time, Kyungsoo’s diet involved mostly of bottled water, junk food, and instant ramen. Occasionally, he’d have fast food delivered to the house and instruct the delivery person to leave it at the gate so he didn’t have to interact with anyone.

Sometimes, late at night when everyone was asleep, Kyungsoo would leave the house and walk to the nearest convenience store to buy a bottle of soju. He would drink it back on the walk home and finish it by then, so he wouldn’t worry his father who would see the bottle in the trash later on.

Since he had run out of sleeping pills and could no longer fill up the prescription for it, Kyungsoo had turned to alcohol to help him sleep at night and not have nightmares about the life he lost.

Kyungsoo hadn’t touched a single book or any academic materials for that matter since his suspension. Kyungsoo didn’t need to anyway. He already knew all the information he needed. He only needed to disassociate and distract himself away from his problems now.

In fact, Kyungsoo had also braced himself with the possibility that all this studying might be useless, should he seriously pursue a different career and aspire to be a restaurant manager. He did download an online book about restaurant management but he had yet to even read it, constantly procrastinating even on something he thought he wanted.

One weekday evening after class, Baekhyun came over to keep Kyungsoo company while his father was busy on a roadshow tour to promote the newest sedan car of the company he worked for.

Kyungsoo’s father would be away for another week so Baekhyun decided to come over more often in the meantime. Simply put, Baekhyun worried at what Kyungsoo would do if he were to leave the latter alone.

Baekhyun bought a takeaway dinner for himself and Kyungsoo. After they ate, Baekhyun hung out in the living room with Kyungsoo. The television was turned on to the daily national news but neither of them was really watching it.

Kyungsoo was playing a game on his phone and Baekhyun was sitting on the couch, darting his attention back and forth from Kyungsoo and the television. Baekhyun felt that he desperately needed to address the situation at hand.

“So, what did you do today?” Baekhyun made small talk.

“I just watched some anime and played games,” Kyungsoo answered, not even looking up from his phone.

“You have work tomorrow, don’t you?” Baekhyun continued.

“Yeah, I work the afternoon to closing shift tomorrow,” Kyungsoo explained, unbudging.

“Anything else? Do you have any other different plans?” Baekhyun sounded a bit stern now, as he folded his arms over his chest, side-eyeing Kyungsoo sitting next to him on the couch.

“Nah,” Kyungsoo simply replied.

“You know there’s more to life than your three days a week job, anime, and playing games. How long are you going to keep living like _this_?,” Baekhyun asserted.

Feeling a tense situation arising, Kyungsoo froze in panic at a possible confrontation, judging by Baekhyun’s displeased tone. Kyungsoo put his phone down on his lap and his body tensed up, even if he tried to hide that happening from view.

He was beginning to feel tingles in his fingers, his chest constricting and his heartbeat, racing. All of it the classic signs of a panic attack or maybe his failing health condition.

Kyungsoo knew he was at fault but he didn’t want to be scolded or accused anymore. Every door he opened led him to rejection and disapproval.

He understood how his behavior would fed up other people. But he just wanted one piece of good news in his life and something stable to hold onto.

But at that moment, his thoughts began to race. He started thinking about how he hadn’t been a good friend to Baekhyun in return, how he took Baekhyun for granted and how Baekhyun realized that he was done with Kyungsoo now.

Kyungsoo knew he was difficult but he couldn’t help it. It wasn’t as if he didn’t try to make things right. He did and he failed miserably. He was drowning in a sea and now the last driftwood he could onto for his life was slipping away. Kyungsoo didn't ask to be difficult. 

Kyungsoo croaked, attempting to please Baekhyun, “Well…I’m thinking of working full time soon. I was already planning to ask my manager to promote me to a full-time waiter. I’m trying, Baekhyun.”

“-and then what?” Baekhyun still seemed displeased, “Are you still going to live like this? Stuck in your room and sulking all day while running away from your problems and letting them get even worse? You never listen to anyone but yourself. Now, look at where you’re at now.”

“I will deal with it eventually…I promise,” Kyungsoo talked slowly, unable to look at Baekhyun in the eye even though they were sitting right next to each other, “Baek, I’m really sorry.”

Baekhyun sighed, “You really make it hard for people to even want to try and be friends with you.”

“Are you going to leave me now?” Kyungsoo asked, delirious at the possibility that he was also going to lose his best friend now.

“Not really,” Baekhyun answered, unsure himself, “But I think I need some time away from you. I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself, Kyungsoo.”

“Oh,” Kyungsoo’s heart sank to the pits of his stomach once he heard those words from Baekhyun. He really was losing in all aspects here.

**

Baekhyun stopped coming over after that evening and the texts between them died down too. Baekhyun didn’t try to initiate conversation and Kyungsoo didn’t want to bother someone who seemed to not want him around either.

Kyungsoo didn’t blame Baekhyun for that but he did wish that there was a better outcome. At this rate, Kyungsoo foresaw everyone he knew leaving him. But still, he wanted the best for everyone, even when they decided that they didn’t want Kyungsoo in a part of their life.

Kyungsoo finally submitted his application to his manager regarding working full-time. Within a week, his request was granted and he now worked six days a week, forcing himself to have less time to laze around the house and feel bad about himself.

Because he had to work more often, Kyungsoo was also forced to have regular sleeping schedules and having to wake up at least two hours before his shift started. When he woke up, the only thought in his head was to get ready and go to work, and no longer the thoughts of Chanyeol or his yet to exist children.

And by the time Kyungsoo got home late from the closing shift, he was put to sleep by exhaustion, instead of alcohol or sleeping pills.

Kyungsoo was still and merely distracted though. He still had bigger problems on hand that he had yet to deal with.

He had yet to contest his academic suspension and challenge Chanyeol’s accusation, which was the only way he could take to coming back to study. He was avoiding Baekhyun too and at this rate, their friendship would probably wither and become stale like it did in the future.

But at least, Kyungsoo somewhat reveled in the fact that he wasn’t going out of his way to “harass” Chanyeol into dating him. Since, a part of him had actually given up on that idea entirely, although another part of him still wanted it to happen so bad.

It had only been less than five months since Kyungsoo woke up here in the past. But he had already forgotten how it felt to be a father and a husband. Kyungsoo no longer knew how it felt to wake up every morning next to the person he loved. He no longer knew how it felt to be proud of the small achievements his children gained.

All of it was a concept to Kyungsoo, no longer an experience.

Even if writing down his memories into a book helped him to recollect those memories, Kyungsoo didn’t feel that he lived that life he wrote of. It was as if he was merely reading a book about a man who had the same name as him.

Now, all the events of the future seemed very far-fetched and ungrounded in reality. Day by day, Kyungsoo was even more convinced that this had been his life all along and he had just believed in a dream that never happened.

That really was the only logical explanation.

Back home from work one evening, Kyungsoo made a new account on Instagram. This time it wasn’t a fake account and Kyungsoo made it clear that it was him.

Kyungsoo’s intentions weren’t to stalk Chanyeol though. He only wanted to send Chanyeol a long heartfelt message (letter) via direct message, to apologize for his actions. Kyungsoo couldn’t think of any other way to contact Chanyeol and not have to be around him, so this was his solution.

It took Kyungsoo a few hours and two full pages of a Microsoft Word document to finish the letter, before sending it on Instagram to Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo didn’t know if Chanyeol would ever see the letter or if he’d just delete the message request right away. Whichever Chanyeol to do, Kyungsoo deactivated his account right after, with a resolve of never logging back in any way.

**

On a slow Tuesday afternoon in April, at work, Kyungsoo was once again told to stand outside the restaurant in the middle of the mall with promotion fliers in his hand. Where he was made to shout out the latest set meal offers to entice potential customers.

While Kyungsoo was trying to promote the menu to two women around his age, he heard someone call out for him over his shoulder. The uninterested women walked away immediately.

Kyungsoo’s first thought was that the person would be a co-worker and he turned around, anticipating to be told to wait for some tables when he came face to face with Chanyeol.

“There you are,” Chanyeol said.

“Excuse me?” Kyungsoo didn’t know how to react except with confusion. He then remembered the message he sent to Chanyeol on Instagram about a week ago. Honestly, Kyungsoo didn’t think that Chanyeol would even read it. Kyungsoo thought the worst now and how it was coming back to bite him in the ass again.

Instead, Chanyeol didn’t seem angry and he continued, “Sorry. I didn’t know how else to contact you. Baekhyun wouldn’t give me your phone number or address but I remembered that you work here, which is why I came here. I came here yesterday to look for you but it was your off day and one of your co-workers said you’d be here today instead.”

“Uh…okay?” Kyungsoo still didn’t know what was going on. He was half expecting Chanyeol to drag him out of there, saying that he wanted to fight Kyungsoo for all the shit that happened.

“What time do you get off your shift?” Chanyeol asked, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“I get off at seven,” Kyungsoo answered, still skeptical.

“Oh, that’s in just less than three hours from now,” Chanyeol noted, looking at the time on his phone, “I’ll come back here at seven. We can go to a cafe or someplace after this so we can talk. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

“Yeah, sure I can,” Kyungsoo mindlessly agreed because he didn’t know how else to react.

Kyungsoo spent the next remaining hours of his shift in a perplexed state, wondering what Chanyeol wanted to meet up and talk about. Kyungsoo didn’t think that it would be about anything nice, based on the past experiences he had with his now ex-husband.

At least, Chanyeol asked to meet in a public place, because Kyungsoo’s incessant worry even led him to think that Chanyeol might want to murder him for all the trouble he caused.

When Kyungsoo’s shift finally ended, he had half the mind to stand up Chanyeol and just go home right away. Kyungsoo was so convinced that more bad news was coming his way because what else would Chanyeol be looking for him for?

Deciding against it, Kyungsoo laced his shoes properly before running out of the restaurant while holding his bag up to his head to cover his face.

He didn’t fool Chanyeol though, who had been waiting outside the restaurant when he clearly saw Kyungsoo running out of the restaurant after his shift was over.

Kyungsoo ran out towards the nearest mall exit with the intention to run to the bus stop, where he would wait for the bus home.

Chanyeol didn’t run. He couldn’t run with the takeaway cup holder in his hand. He brisked walked to chase Kyungsoo until he got to the bus stop, where the bus had yet to arrive. The other sole person at the bus stop was too busy with their phone to pay mind to Chanyeol and Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo flustered once he saw Chanyeol walking towards the bus stop, his eyes wide behind his glasses as he thought of somewhere else to run.

“Kyungsoo!” Chanyeol firmly called out, “Please stop running. I cannot have a conversation with you if you keep running.”

Kyungsoo knew he was fucked and half considered running onto the busy street to get away. He stammered, “W-why do you want to talk to me? I hadn’t seen you in over a month. I stayed away from you as you wanted! You were the one who came to where I work. What did I do now?”

“It’s about that long message you sent me on Instagram!” Chanyeol revealed.

“Oh, that,” Kyungsoo froze. So Chanyeol did see it, after all.

Kyungsoo accused, “So you’re going to send it as further proof to the university to have me finally expelled? Is your phone recording me right now as we speak!? Huh!?”

“No, it isn’t!” Chanyeol exclaimed, “I actually want to talk to you about a few things. In fact, I had even thought of a way to repeal your suspension. Now if you will stop trying to run away, we can actually have that conversation. Here, I even bought coffee for you.” Chanyeol handed one cup from the takeaway holder to Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo eyed the cup of coffee Chanyeol was handing to him. He didn’t have to read the label to find out what it was. The coffee was definitely a caffe mocha, Chanyeol’s favorite.

Of course, Kyungsoo couldn’t say that out loud. He wasn’t supposed to know of it.

Chanyeol heaved a sigh of relief when Kyungsoo finally accepted the cup of coffee. Chanyeol sat himself down on the bus stop bench, taking sips from his coffee.

Kyungsoo sat on the other bench beside Chanyeol’s, keeping a safe distance from the latter. He didn’t want to speak yet to be safe.

“So, about that whole message thing,” Chanyeol spoke first.

“Yeah, what about it?” Kyungsoo already felt defensive.

Chanyeol cleared his throat and after a pause, he resumed, “I read the message you sent me. In fact, I might have read it a few times. I thought about it for days after that and it made me realize a few things, especially the last few words you wrote. You talked about how much pain you were in after Jongdae’s passing. You wrote something about how I kept blaming you for the accident when you could have done the same and just pushed the blame onto me…which you didn’t. You knew I was hurt but you didn’t choose to hurt me more.”

Kyungsoo began to tremble with the coffee cup in his hands, still untouched. He felt like he might cry but he didn’t want to do that, not in front of Chanyeol.

Chanyeol hung his head and continued, “I don’t know how it slipped my mind but I never stopped to think that you were hurt too. You suffered too but I made it all about me. I’m not sure how I still feel about you after all those weird things you told me but I’m not here to talk about that. I do admit that I was unfair and selfish in how I treated you after the accident. For that, I apologize. I’m sorry, Kyungsoo.”

Kyungsoo was still trembling. He was crying now and his tears were fogging up his glasses. But he didn’t move, still clutching onto the coffee cup Chanyeol bought for him. Kyungsoo had not even taken a sip of the coffee yet. 

Kyungsoo allowed Chanyeol to continue talking. Gently, Chanyeol broke it to Kyungsoo, “Also when you told me that you loved me, I sort of understand why you were saying all those strange things to me. I know how it feels like to be in love with someone you cannot have. I admit that I have even made up fantasies of marrying the person I like. I mean, who hasn’t? But you really need to know how to separate your fantasy and reality, Kyungsoo. You can’t go around spewing nonsense like that. Anyone would be turned away if you said those things to them. Those are things you need to keep to yourself.”

“Well then,” Chanyeol finished up his coffee, looking up at the night sky polluted by the city lights, “Can you reactivate the Instagram account? I need it to contact you and arrange a time and date. We’ll both go to the university and see your dean. I’m going to repeal the harassment report and I’ll try to get you reinstated as a student. I just want you to promise that we will be no contact after that, alright?”

Sniffling back tears, Kyungsoo nodded, “Yeah, I can do that.”

“That should be good,” Chanyeol muttered back.

Kyungsoo began sobbing uncontrollably now. Chanyeol kept his distance and offered consolation only through his words. Bit by bit, Kyungsoo was reminded of why he fell in love with Chanyeol in the very first place, once they had moved past the animosity and misdirected hate.

Underneath it all, Chanyeol was actually a very understanding man. He made mistakes like every human being but he learned from it and moved on to make a better future outcome. 

Kyungsoo thought that he had reasons to finally move on from what he lost. This only made things harder and set him two steps backward. Why did he have to fall in love all over again?


	8. 21st April 2017- 4th March 2020

Kyungsoo returned to university in late April and was able to resume his studies. He was made to sign an oath to maintain a distance from Chanyeol unless it was absolutely necessary for them to be together in the same place.

Kyungsoo also resigned from his position at the restaurant once he was back in university.

Kyungsoo’s classmates seemed to have an inkling as to why Kyungsoo disappeared for over a month. But they didn’t know the details, only knowing that it had to do with some personal strife of Kyungsoo which led to his suspension.

Chanyeol wasn’t one to gossip either and he didn’t tell anyone about what went on, thus protecting Kyungsoo’s integrity and saving him face.

Kyungsoo was glad that at least Chanyeol had not put a legal restraining order on him, which would look bad on public records for him. Furthermore, he had no other reasons to be around Chanyeol anymore either so it wouldn’t be too hard to avoid Chanyeol.

Knowing where Chanyeol liked to hang out around campus, Kyungsoo made sure to avoid those places too. It shouldn’t be too hard, considering the large size of the campus, Kyungsoo thought.

But despite that, he still did accidentally run into Chanyeol while walking down the hall or during lunchtime at the cafeteria. When that happened, Kyungsoo would bow his head and walk away to immediately exit the situation.

Chanyeol understood that those random encounters were by accident and purely coincidental. When that happened, he’d try to force a small smile to make it less awkward on Kyungsoo’s behalf before going on his own way too.

Nonetheless, Chanyeol would be reminded of Kyungsoo and their little accidental encounter for at least the whole day. In ways Chanyeol couldn’t explain, Kyungsoo often left a lasting impression on him, be it for better or for worse.

Next, Kyungsoo attempted to repair his friendship with Baekhyun. Kyungsoo personally apologized for his mistakes and actions that troubled Baekhyun. He asked to be given another chance to prove that he was slowly taking steps to change himself.

Kyungsoo had actually thought that Baekhyun would not believe him and want to be friends again. But Baekhyun forgave Kyungsoo and gave him another chance to prove himself.

Even then, Kyungsoo didn’t felt that he finally managed to “maintain” his friendship with Baekhyun because they would inevitably drift apart and reach that stage of contact where they only wished each other “Happy Birthday” once a year.

Baekhyun was in his final year and was busy as expected with final year projects, internships and classes so he could finally graduate.

Knowing that, Kyungsoo also decided that it was best that he tried keeping a distance from Baekhyun for the best, not wanting to burden his only friend with his own problems and general instability. Kyungsoo wanted the best for Baekhyun too, even if it meant taking himself out of the picture.

They still did hang out with each other but less frequently and their texts and calls became more sporadic than usual. When they talked, Kyungsoo also avoided talking about himself and focused more on Baekhyun, having decided that no good would come out of sharing his problems with anyone.

In the summer of 2017, the construction for the house the scroll seller would move into was finally completed. Banners and signboards had been put up in the residential area surrounding the detached houses project to advertise the sale.

Before the specific house was sold off, Kyungsoo replicated the scroll he would buy in the future, word for word. It wasn’t that hard considering that it was just a stationery shop-bought calligraphy scroll, which he could find almost anywhere.

In the middle of the night in July, Kyungsoo broke into the house by prying the windows open with a crowbar. Kyungsoo entered the kitchen area of the empty house and with the crowbar, pried open the loosest floorboard.

There, he planted the scroll together with a note to sell it to “Do Kyungsoo” at a certain specified university.

Kyungsoo designated himself as “Kyungsoo B” with “Kyungsoo A” being the one from the future.

Kyungsoo A experienced a completely different past than what Kyungsoo B was currently experiencing. Kyungsoo A received the scroll in the year 2030, even when he never planted one to be sent to himself.

Kyungsoo had reasons to believe that he might actually be the person who wrote the scroll as a warning to himself, although he had no idea of how it ended up to Kyungsoo A in the future.

By doing so, Kyungsoo ensured that the scroll would eventually return to the Kyungsoo B life he lived now. Hoping that doing so would put him back into a loop where he returned to becoming Kyungsoo A.

Compared to all the other risks Kyungsoo had taken prior to this as Kyungsoo B, this seemed the most harmless. At worse, if Kyungsoo never returned to becoming Kyungsoo A, he would only have a useless scroll to deal with.

Eventually, Kyungsoo even forgot about it. 

***

Accepting that his life was different now, Kyungsoo was more comfortable with doing things differently, unafraid that his actions would severely affect his future.

His children were never born on February 14th, 2018 and he never married Chanyeol on June 9th, 2018.

Kyungsoo still did celebrate the occasions that only Kyungsoo A experienced, such as his wedding anniversary and his children’s birthday but told no one about it. Around the day, he’d bring his father and/or even Baekhyun out for a nice dinner under the pretense of treating them to a meal.

Baekhyun graduated in February of 2018 and got himself a job and a girlfriend shortly later, while Kyungsoo was busy making final touches to his dissertation before the thesis defense in late May.

Naturally, they began to see each other less often, especially now that they were no longer usually in the same place and had their own things to deal with.

Kyungsoo A was only able to finalize his dissertation and defense his thesis around November of the same year. Kyungsoo B was several months ahead because he never had to take time off to give birth and was considerably more experienced due to coming from the future.

During the thesis defense in the university’s auditorium, which was public for attendees, Kyungsoo saw Chanyeol in the audience and his breath hitched while he was summarizing the research to the panel.

Chanyeol also attended the thesis defense for Kyungsoo A because he wanted to support his husband. Kyungsoo A had been nervous about the whole process because it was his first time and Chanyeol had been there for the morale boost.

But Kyungsoo B was considerably more experienced and independent from Chanyeol. This wasn’t his first time, after all. Kyungsoo simply smiled it off, excused himself for the brief pause and continued presenting his research without a single stutter or doubt in his own capabilities.

Chanyeol was probably there for a friend who was going to present their thesis too. There was no way Chanyeol would be there for him, Kyungsoo believed.

Kyungsoo graduated with his master’s degree in the fall of the same year, one semester early than Kyungsoo A. Only Baekhyun and his father attended the graduation ceremony. This time, there was no Chanyeol or his children.

Due to his exemplary research, Kyungsoo won the Chancellor’s Award and was offered a full scholarship and grant to continue his P.h.D, which he accepted in a heartbeat.

In the spring of 2019, Kyungsoo started his doctoral studies at the same time Chanyeol graduated with his postgraduate law degree. Kyungsoo no longer saw Chanyeol around campus for a few months after that.

As a P.h.D student, Kyungsoo was also employed by the university as a tutor, mainly teaching a few classes a week for undergraduate freshmen, while working on his research at the same time.

Kyungsoo genuinely enjoyed the time he spent teaching, probably even more than his independent research. He liked being a teacher and interacting with his students, especially when they came to him for guidance.

For a while, Kyungsoo felt that he was getting somewhere in this life and that he was leaving an impact of his own. He felt that the sun had once again risen over the dark plains that once shrouded his life. But with light, also came a shadow.

He was occasionally reminded of what he lost and could never possibly achieve here. His non-existent marriage and children remained a ghost of his past future that continued to haunt him from the shadows.

If Kyungsoo were to list out a fault, he could say that it was probably his drinking habits. Although his heart condition improved now years since the car accident, Kyungsoo really wasn’t doing himself a favor when he made it a goal to drink until he passed out almost every weekend.

Kyungsoo justified that he was able to well balance it between his duties, which encouraged him down this destructive behavior even more.

**

On the first day of the 2019 fall semester in September, Kyungsoo walked into the P.h.D student office, looking forward to teaching a class later that week after the quiet summers where he had no classes to teach.

The office was large with space for over sixty desks and separate cubicles for all the P.h.D students of humanities majors. Doctoral students pursuing a technical major had a separate office in another building.

So Kyungsoo wasn’t too surprised to walk in that Monday morning to see Chanyeol sitting at a desk, two desks away from Kyungsoo’s own. He did know Chanyeol would eventually start pursuing his doctoral degree anyway. 

“Uh…,” Kyungsoo gaped, unsure if he was supposed to leave the room now because he really needed to get some work done at his desk.

“Oh, hi,” Chanyeol greeted rather jovially, noticing Kyungsoo, “I’m starting my P.h.D from now on. I heard that you would be here too.”

“Umm…yeah?” Kyungsoo remained cautious, “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be avoiding you still.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Chanyeol brushed off, “The administration told me we might be in the same place from here on but I told them it doesn’t matter now. Honestly, I’ve put all that behind me.”

“Okay?” Kyungsoo didn’t know what to do.

Chanyeol stood up from his desk, pushed back his chair and then walked towards Kyungsoo. He stretched out a hand which he offered to Kyungsoo, “How about we start over? What do you say?”

“What’s going on with you?” Kyungsoo leaned back, watchfully eyeing the hand Chanyeol offered to him, “Aren’t you afraid that I still might want to ‘harass’ you? What if I told you we might have three children this time? You are aware that I’m a carrier who can get pregnant, don’t you?”

“Honestly if you wanted to harass me, I can’t do much to stop you. But I’ve decided to put my trust and belief in you. If you do end up harassing me again, that’s on me for being foolish. Over the past few years, I’ve also come to realize that I never really did give you the opportunity to change. Instead, I told you to stay away from me and that really didn’t do anything to fix things between us,” Chanyeol claimed.

“So you’re saying you want to be friends with me now?” Kyungsoo questioned.

“Yeah, of course,” Chanyeol agreed.

“Sure, I guess,” Kyungsoo shrugged, only pretending to be indifferent because he was actually liking where this was going on, albeit wary.

“Well then, I look forward to it,” Chanyeol smiled, taking Kyungsoo’s hand and shaking it, even without Kyungsoo offering his hand in return.

Even if things were taking a positive turn in his relationship with Chanyeol, Kyungsoo had set his mind on being a passive participant in this new friendship of theirs. He wouldn’t initiate and wouldn’t go out of his way to try and strengthen this bond with Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo was still very much afraid that things might go wrong and he didn’t want it to be his fault when it did.

A few days later, Chanyeol asked to exchange phone numbers and Kyungsoo had to do it to avoid upsetting Chanyeol. From Kyungsoo’s point of view, exchanging phone numbers with Chanyeol only gave him more ways to contact Kyungsoo outside of their professional setting.

But Kyungsoo would be lying if he said that he didn’t like the ease of connectivity between each other now.

Then in the following weeks, Chanyeol even eased his way into asking Kyungsoo to have lunch with him. Fortunately for Kyungsoo, it was never just the both of them at lunch because some other students in the office would overhear Chanyeol’s loud voice and ask to come along.

Kyungsoo just didn’t want to fall in love all over with Chanyeol again, not after his love had died that evening at the bus stop, three years ago.

Emotions were complicated and often got the best of Kyungsoo. He wasn’t willing to deal with it again.

Around late October, Kyungsoo was staying back late at the office because he had mid-term test papers to mark. Professors were known for pushing the marking work onto their postgraduate student tutors. In fact, Kyungsoo was guilty of it himself in the future when he had become a professor himself.

Kyungsoo was hunched over his desk with his tie flipped over his shoulder, squinting at one student’s test paper because he had a hard time reading the small writing. It was past eight at night and Kyungsoo had been on campus for almost twelve hours straight now.

The office was almost empty save for a few others who had stayed behind to get their own work done.

Kyungsoo heard someone coming and looked up from the paper momentarily to see Chanyeol arriving and pulling up a chair next to him.

“You’re still here,” Chanyeol noted, placing down two coffee cups at the edge of Kyungsoo’s desk, “Here, I bought coffee for you.”

“Thanks. I thought you went home like an hour ago,” Kyungsoo replied, turning away back to the paper.

“Yeah I was supposed to go back but my car wouldn’t start. I tried for so long but I gave up,” Chanyeol chuckled, “I’m too lazy to deal with it now so I’ll just park it on campus overnight and come back for it tomorrow.”

“I see,” Kyungsoo nodded, eyes scanning the essay written on the paper.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol nodded too, sitting up, “So what do you think?”

“Umm…what?” Kyungsoo lifted his head up and turned to Chanyeol to give him the response he wanted, “Sorry to hear about your car. I mean, you could get a rideshare home?”

“What time do you get off?” Chanyeol asked, “I was thinking that you could maybe send me home since you know where I live and all. I’ll pay for gas!”

“I still don’t drive, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo sighed, smiling at the irony of the situation, “-and even if I did, do you seriously want to get in the car I’m driving?”

“Maybe,” Chanyeol seemed unsure and in thought himself.

Kyungsoo chuckled, bemused, “I told my father to pick me up at ten. You can go home then with me if you want. Just give my dad the gas money.”

That evening, Kyungsoo was once again reminded of how well Chanyeol and his father could get along. After all, if it wasn’t for that fact, Choongsun probably wouldn't have ever given his blessings for Kyungsoo A to be with Chanyeol after the news of the unplanned pregnancy broke out.

It was nice to see Chanyeol cracking up jokes with Choongsun in the car that night. But it left a bitter aftertaste in Kyungsoo’s mouth when he was reminded of how much he had failed to achieve as Kyungsoo B.

He could have this and so much more but he didn’t.

Kyungsoo cried himself to sleep that night. If anything, being closer to Chanyeol made him feel even worse but better at hiding how he truly felt.

This would go on for about a week or two while Chanyeol’s car was in the workshop. Where Chanyeol would hitch a ride home with Kyungsoo, up to a point Choongsun was inviting Chanyeol over dinner.

Eventually, Chanyeol’s rich parents decided to buy him a new car but Kyungsoo didn’t see the end of it. Because now, Chanyeol was the one offering rides to and back from campus for Kyungsoo who now seriously reconsidered reapplying for his driver’s license.

On Chanyeol’s 27th birthday that year, Kyungsoo had no classes to teach that day and had nothing going on to be on campus too.

He still came to the office early in the morning before everyone else arrived, to leave a wrapped gift box on Chanyeol’s desk, with a moderately priced watch inside.

The gift was given anonymously because Kyungsoo didn’t want to repeat the disaster which was Chanyeol’s 24th birthday.

They weren’t married here and Kyungsoo didn’t think that Chanyeol actually liked him that much, but he still wanted to give his once husband a gift.

After leaving the gift, Kyungsoo went home, only to receive a text message a few hours later from Chanyeol who sent a picture of his wrist while wearing the watch.

Chanyeol didn’t tell anyone about his birthday and he remembered that Kyungsoo knew about it, narrowing down the people who gave him the gift down to Kyungsoo. It was also helped by the fact that someone actually saw Kyungsoo leaving the gift, even when Kyungsoo thought he was alone in the office at the time.

When Kyungsoo realized his mistake, he felt like running away, moving abroad and changing his name so he wouldn’t have to see Chanyeol ever again. He was embarrassed and very much scared because he only had bad experiences to go off of.

The next message notification that came on his phone, Kyungsoo expected Chanyeol to send another picture of the watch in a trash can with him giving the middle finger to Kyungsoo.

But it actually turned out to be Chanyeol thanking Kyungsoo and mentioning how happy he was to receive the gift.

As thanks, Chanyeol asked to go out for dinner that same weekend. Kyungsoo turned it down with the fake excuse that he was busy when he would actually be binge drinking alone at several bars before having his father pick him up.

Chanyeol bought the excuse and said he’d ask again in the coming weeks once the fall semester came to an end.

Kyungsoo hoped Chanyeol would forget but he didn’t and Kyungsoo was forced to go out on the weekend before Christmas.

Chanyeol chose to have dinner at a steakhouse and Kyungsoo ordered one too many glasses of red wine so he wouldn't feel too anxious at being in such a romantic setting with someone he didn’t want to catch feelings for- again.

Kyungsoo drank too much that even the waiter serving them and Chanyeol himself was uncomfortable at letting him refill the wine glass.

At the end of the evening, Kyungsoo was having trouble walking himself out and Chanyeol swooped in to help. Putting one of Kyungsoo’s arm around his shoulder and holding him up, Chanyeol walked Kyungsoo outside the busy steakhouse and towards his new car in the parking lot.

Careful to not hit Kyungsoo’s head on the door, Chanyeol placed Kyungsoo in the back seat and strapped his seat belt on for him.

Before Chanyeol could even close the door, Kyungsoo was already retching. Quickly, Chanyeol took out his handkerchief and held it in front of Kyungsoo’s mouth, afraid he would vomit.

“No, I’m fine,” Kyungsoo slurred, his drunk self confident that he wouldn't be throwing up on Chanyeol’s seat.

“You can really hold your liquor down,” Chanyeol snickered even though he was actually worried, deep down.

Kyungsoo laughed back, “You should see what else I can hold down.”

Chanyeol was more worried than amused when he heard that but laughed it off too.

The ride home was quiet with Chanyeol driving as it began to snow and Kyungsoo almost half-asleep in the rear seat. Kyungsoo leaned his head against the window and watched as the snow fell and Christmas decorations twinkled under the night sky.

It was that time of that year again.

When Chanyeol finally pulled up in front of Kyungsoo’s house, he looked behind at the rear seat to see Kyungsoo already pretty awake and slightly sobered up.

“Are you alright to walk back inside?” Chanyeol asked, looking at Kyungsoo from over his shoulder.

“Yeah, I think so,” Kyungsoo was only half sure, still looking up at the snowy sky through the foggy window.

“If you need help, let me know. I’m not in a rush,” Chanyeol offered, looking straight ahead now.

“It’s almost Christmas, isn’t it?” Kyungsoo brought up.

“Yeah,” was all Chanyeol said in return, sort of knowing how this conversation would carry out.

“It was snowing like this that night too,” Kyungsoo pointed out.

“I know,” Chanyeol agreed one hand on the steering wheel.

Inside of the car, it was warm and sort of gaze a lulling and cozy feel. The engine was still running, lowly humming in the background. It was dim and only illuminated by the indicator lights on the dashboard and the lamp posts outside.

“I miss Jongdae,” Kyungsoo confessed, “If I could choose to go back to a specified time, I would have never driven that night. We should have just spent the night somewhere and waited until the morning.”

“I miss him too but it was an accident. None of us saw it coming and besides, it’s not like you were driving drunk that night. It was really just bad luck,” Chanyeol tried to assure.

“You think so?” Kyungsoo sighed, “I thought you’d have a harder time moving on from Jongdae’s passing but it seems that it’s me who’s having a harder time. I really feel bad about it, Chanyeol. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. I really am. I wish I could undo that and not...nevermind.”

Chanyeol paused and collected his thoughts before he resumed, “I’ve made my peace with it, Kyungsoo. Maybe you should too.”

Kyungsoo dryly chuckled, inebriated, “If Jongdae were alive, I’d still have one more friend. I barely even talk to Baekhyun now and I only last saw him two months ago. Now, all I have is…you. Not that I’m complaining though. I just didn’t think it’d be like this. Man, it’s so hard and lonely to be an adult.”

“It is indeed. I feel the same way,” Chanyeol pondered upon, “It does seem that we’re each other’s only friends now.”

Hearing that, Kyungsoo roared in laughter until he almost felt his dinner threatening to come back into his throat as vomit.

“Sorry,” Kyungsoo said as he settled down, “I just find it a bit ironic coming from you.”

“I understand,” Chanyeol replied.

Kyungsoo inhaled, taking a deep breath and leaned his back against the headrest, “I think I might need to take you up on the offer to help me walk inside. I feel dizzy. Sorry.”

“Sure,” Chanyeol smiled a little, looking back at Kyungsoo through the rearview mirror.

A few months later, in March 2020, Choongsun had a heart attack while he was home alone one afternoon. Kyungsoo only found out that evening after Chanyeol had dropped him off back home, where he found his father unresponsive in the living room.

Kyungsoo immediately called Chanyeol who slammed the car brakes and turned around to help bring Choongsun to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Kyungsoo was more confused than grieved. He fell to his knees outside the emergency room in the hospital with Chanyeol worriedly by his side.

His father wasn’t supposed to die until 2022 and even when Kyungsoo knew this timeline was not the same, he was in shock that his actions had caused his father to die sooner rather than later. 


	9. 4th March 2020- 27th August 2020

Before Kyungsoo could even compose himself outside of the hospital room his father was pronounced dead in, he was already asked by the hospital staff to make funeral arrangements.

As the only son of his father, it was Kyungsoo’s responsibility as per the local custom to take on the role of the chief mourner and arrange for the funeral.

Kyungsoo A had done this before. He knew how to arrange a funeral and how to manage one but he was still shaken at being thrown right back into it.

Instead, it was Chanyeol who picked Kyungsoo up from the cold sanitized floors of the hospital and sat him down on a chair. Chanyeol handed Kyungsoo a glass of water and rubbed his back, calming Kyungsoo down before asking him if he would like to call anyone.

Kyungsoo only spoke after a while, nodding a yes and handing his phone over to Chanyeol so he could call Kyungsoo’s mother on his behalf.

The wake and funeral ceremony lasted three days. Most parts of it were arranged with the help of Kyungsoo’s mother, stepfather, and Chanyeol who helped communicate to the mourners on Kyungsoo’s behalf. In the future where Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were married, Chanyeol took on all the responsibility as head mourner as the son-in-law.

Kyungsoo saw Baekhyun for the first time in over half a year during the funeral but he was too distraught to spend much time with Baekhyun, who didn't seem too surprised either to see how involved Chanyeol was in all of this. 

Here, Chanyeol was helping out even if they weren’t married and Kyungsoo never really asked for it. Although, Kyungsoo was really and beyond grateful for it.

But the ordeal wasn’t over, even after Choongsun was cremated and his ashes laid to rest in a dedicated locker in a charnel house.

Kyungsoo stayed over at his estranged mother and stepfather’s house for about a week after the funeral. That was when the real hurdle began; when Kyungsoo had to return to an empty house where his father was no longer there, especially after getting used to his father’s presence yet again.

The crushing reality of it and the stabbing loneliness Kyungsoo felt from it was akin to him being thrown into the past and losing everything he had gained. Just when Kyungsoo thought it was all over, it came back to him.

Kyungsoo inherited Choongsun’s car after his death, even though he was not yet licensed to drive again. The car dealership where Choongsun used to work in also offered to pool in and give Kyungsoo almost 90% off the price for a new car should he wish to buy one, which Kyungsoo did not decline but put on hold instead.

In the meantime, his father’s car sat collecting dust in the garage. Occasionally, Kyungsoo would sit in it and turn the engine on to keep it from breaking down, where he would break into tears not only at his father’s passing but also from his misery

Back at home alone, Kyungsoo often found himself too breaking down in what was probably the strangest and what appeared to be the most normal of moments. Grief was certainly a strange phase for himself, Kyungsoo believed.

When he was preparing dinner, he instinctively grabbed for two plates to set out on the table, only to realize that he only needed to serve a meal for one now.

Kyungsoo didn’t smoke and he didn’t like cigarettes either but oddly, he found himself missing the tobacco smell lingering in the house after his father smoked.

Passing by Choongsun’s favorite fried chicken shop was also challenging because of the voice in Kyungsoo’s head reminding him how his father would have asked him to buy some on the way home.

And although he wasn’t a big fan of it, Kyungsoo still did stop by at the fried chicken shop to buy himself Choongsun’s favorite set meal.

He would then go home and eat it, maybe in an attempt to figure out why his father liked it so much. In the end, Kyungsoo still didn’t understand why.

Without Choongsun to drive him to or back from his lonely binge drinking sessions at a few bars around the neighborhood, Kyungsoo resorted to stacking up the kitchen with alcohol ranging from six-packs of beer, table wine, soju, and even some pricey whiskey.

Honestly speaking, apart from his father, Kyungsoo only trusted Chanyeol to ferry him safely when he was drunk. Kyungsoo was a little bit anxious at getting into a random taxi or rideshare while almost blackout drunk, afraid he might get robbed or even never make it home.

So instead of hopping down to his favorite quiet bar, on a Friday evening, Kyungsoo would open up a bottle of alcohol, sit at the couch and turn on the television before drinking to the news, drama, reality show or whatever movie the channel was airing. He never really paid much attention anyway. It was just to keep him company from the dolorous silence.

Usually, at the bars, Kyungsoo would be refused any more drinks once he was visibly wasted and that was usually his cue to go home.

Here, at home alone, there was no one to stop him and Kyungsoo often made it an unhealthy goal to drink himself until almost passing out.

So, it became often, where Kyungsoo woke up with a bad hangover on weekend mornings, finding himself in some weird position where he was half on the couch and half on the floor. The lights in the house would still be on even in broad daylight and so was the television, where the sounds would be giving him even more of a headache.

The coffee table in front of the couch would be littered with empty packets of junk food, beer cans, soju bottle, and the likes. Kyungsoo wouldn’t be able to clean up until the headache from the hangover was over, which was usually hours later.

And after that, whatever remaining time Kyungsoo had were to carry out basic errands such as doing the laundry, buying groceries, making sure the utilities were handled for and preparing for the coming week.

Then on the weekdays, Kyungsoo dedicated his full time to his tutoring work and studies. On top of helping his students with whatever problems they were having, he was always filling in papers or forms for grant requests, research collaboration and discussions with other researchers in his field.

His and Chanyeol’s relationship remained strictly professional and on the level of “work-only” friends, mostly because Kyungsoo was the one who put the distance between both of them.

Kyungsoo wouldn’t decline if Chanyeol asked to have lunch together on a typical weekday. But if Chanyeol asked to hang out together on a weekend and outside of their university setting, Kyungsoo would decline to affirm the gap of making sure Chanyeol was no longer involved in his personal life.

This was the least painful option but it still did hurt, nonetheless.

During semester breaks and Kyungsoo didn’t have classes to teach, he was often jetting off to another city for academic conventions and meetings.

Even if his lifestyle kept him busy and distracted, it actually never gave him time to properly grief or move on from his feelings. Because when he actually had the time to do so, he further avoided the problem with drinking himself until the point of passing out.

To Kyungsoo, everything but his studies were irrelevant and ceased to have meaning. His father was gone, his marriage didn’t happen and his children were supposed to be born years ago. 

He only lived for the sole purpose of his career now. If Kyungsoo were to lose that, he had decided that he didn’t want to be alive any longer. After what he had been through, it was hard to find anything new worth living for.

Towards the end of August, Kyungsoo finally had some free time for himself, a week before the fall semester was due to begin. For the first time since his father’s death, Kyungsoo took some time off from work.

He was home alone on a Friday evening, watching the news report of a catastrophic natural disaster on another continent. Kyungsoo had set out a shot glass and a cold bottle of soju on the coffee table but had yet to start drinking.

Kyungsoo had almost forgotten about this natural disaster but in the timeline of Kyungsoo A, he remembered how this event was probably the most talked-about event of the year.

Reminded of the event, Kyungsoo started recalling what other significant events occurred from the timeline of Kyungsoo A such as political changes, death of famous figures, pop culture phenomenon and such.

As a History major, Kyungsoo had an exceptionally good memory for remembering events and happenings, even if the feeling of being Kyungsoo A was now almost lost to him.

Kyungsoo’s specialty was in history concerning the 20th century and he admitted that he hadn’t really been paying attention to current events since he assumed that he wouldn’t be alive long enough to see it become history old enough for him to study.

Now that he was actually giving it the time of his day, it occurred to Kyungsoo that most, if not all, that happened in the timeline of Kyungsoo A did happen at around the same time of Kyungsoo B too. Everything except for his marriage and children that is.

Kyungsoo dryly chuckled at the irony of that. He was past pitying himself so he only shook his head, poured out soju for himself and drank to the news as per his usual day off routine but on a weekday instead.

A few days later while still on break before the start of the fall semester, Kyungsoo was on his way home on foot after buying dinner at a nearby restaurant.

It was a few minutes past seven in the evening. The sun had just set less than ten minutes ago and although the temperature had dropped, it was still rather warm; typical for the late August climate.

The specific restaurant Kyungsoo bought his dinner from had no delivery service, hence why needed to walk to get there. He half-regretted it now because he was sweating and finding it a bit hard to breathe, which he blamed on the heat.

Walking down the street just outside his house, under the streetlights, Kyungsoo saw a familiar car parked outside the driveway and the figure of a tall man waiting outside his door. It was no doubt Chanyeol and Kyungsoo would know that of course, considering the fact that he was married to this man outside his door in a different version of this time.

For a while, Kyungsoo wondered if he should turn around and just eat his takeaway at a park gazebo. He had no idea why Chanyeol would be looking for him but he didn’t really want to be interacting with anyone for that matter, and not because Chanyeol was Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo still wanted to be home though so he thought he might as well deal with it. He didn’t want to put more effort into walking somewhere else and waiting out in the dark for a bit longer.

Therefore, Kyungsoo walked up to his house, forced a smile and greeting for when Chanyeol saw him and then walked up to him.

“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol seemed cheerful and excited to see Kyungsoo, “You weren’t home so I tried calling you but you didn’t answer. So yeah, I decided to wait a bit for you to come back. I’m not sure where you went.”

“Oh, I just went out to buy food for dinner. I didn’t take my phone with me,” Kyungsoo iterated by lifting the takeaway bag to Chanyeol’s view, “So yeah, what did you come here for?”

“Well,” Chanyeol paused before continuing, “I wanted to see you since we’re both free this week. There’s something I wish to talk to you about.”

“Oh yeah, what is it?” Kyungsoo asked as he keyed in the passcode to his front door, now realizing that it would be common courtesy to invite Chanyeol inside, even if that wasn’t what he really wanted.

Sighing innately and thinking that he had luckily cleaned the house that afternoon, Kyungsoo reluctantly invited Chanyeol inside.

Kyungsoo served instant iced coffee for Chanyeol and opened a beer can for himself. Chanyeol waited on the couch with his back straight and his hands on his lap while he waited for Kyungsoo to return from the kitchen.

While Kyungsoo wasn’t a psychology expert or that good in reading body language, Chanyeol seemed a bit restless there. Kyungsoo himself never really relaxed either since he stepped into his own home after walking down to get dinner.

Unable to guess what it is Chanyeol wanted to talk about, Kyungsoo began to feel anxious, afraid it would be something upsetting. Suddenly, he felt that he didn’t wish to hear it but also wanted to rid himself of wondering what it would be.

Kyungsoo chugged the entire beer can down in a few gulps in response to the uncertainty. But surely, only one can of rather light beer was not enough to even make him tipsy, thanks to his heavy drinking habits and the alcohol tolerance he had built up over time.

Maybe the fact that Kyungsoo finished the beer within seconds left Chanyeol feeling even more uncomfortable than he already visibly was.

Now, Kyungsoo really needed another drink. He was still anxious as hell.

Kyungsoo decided to speak up first, ready to lift himself up from the couch, “So…uh, do you want more coffee? I’m going to the kitchen to get myself some more drinks.”

“No, thank you,” Chanyeol answered almost instantly, “Please, sit down. I’ll be quick. I can tell you’re uncomfortable with me having here. I mean, we’ve never really hung out at your place and I know it makes you anxious.”

“Oh yeah?” Kyungsoo sat himself down on the couch, leaning back against the cushion, a bit surprised to hear how aware Chanyeol was of his feelings. Was it supposed to be like this?

Chanyeol looked at Kyungsoo, opening his mouth to say something but closed it back again and looked away downwards instead.

Kyungsoo had expected Chanyeol to say something when he didn’t. Kyungsoo urged, “Well?”

Awkwardly, Chanyeol laughed, “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

“What?” Kyungsoo reacted, only able to think of the worst possible outcome now.

Chanyeol cleared his throat before speaking again, purposely avoiding looking at Kyungsoo, “I’ve been having dreams lately.”

“Don’t we all?” Kyungsoo affirmed.

“Well, these dreams of mine were different. They were about…you,” Chanyeol revealed.

Kyungsoo shrugged, “It’s normal for us to have dreams where our friends and people we know are in it. I don’t see anything odd about that.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Chanyeol shook his head, looking at his unattended coffee on the table, “Do you remember those stuff you told me several years ago?”

“Which one?” Kyungsoo couldn’t think of anything specific but he remained fearful.

“You know…about you telling me that we get married and have kids?” Chanyeol was hoping Kyungsoo would remember, lest he is put in an even awkward situation if Kyungsoo didn’t.

Kyungsoo sighed and leaned his head back against the cushion, looking up at the ceiling, “Yeah, I do remember that. Is it giving you nightmares now? Sorry, you can’t sleep at night because what I told you like four years ago.”

“It’s not like that, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol mentioned, “Did you have these dreams like me too? Is that why you really said those things to me years ago?”

Kyungsoo remained in this position, trying to relax and calm his breathing down at least to no avail as he responded, “I don’t know. Maybe? Why are you bringing up these out of all times? Do you still hate me and want to get back at me for that? I thought I’ve been punished enough for that.”

“No,” Chanyeol further denied and then tried to explain, “It’s not what you think is. I just thought that I now finally understand why you said all those things to me. I used to think it’s because you had a crush on me and ended up making this wild fantasy about us being together. But I’ve been having these reoccurring dreams of us together, raising our children. Not just once but many times now. It’s been going on for a few months now. Kyungsoo, they felt so…real.”

Kyungsoo lifted his head from the cushion up to look at Chanyeol, who was now looking back at him.

It was cooler inside the house and under the fan but Kyungsoo began to break out in cold sweat. So far, he was doing a good job of hiding his erratic breathing from Chanyeol. All of this he attributed to his anxiety and this uncomfortable topic they were discussing because it only served to bring back memories Kyungsoo had chosen to repress.

Chanyeol continued, “I’m starting to believe that because the dream felt so real, you might have been confused and all when you woke up, especially when it happened again. When I think about it again, I feel horrible for the way I treated you at the time-”

“I don’t need your apology, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo quickly said before Chanyeol could talk on further. Kyungsoo was sitting upright now, fully attentive, “You don’t have to be nice to me because you feel bad. Please, just forget everything I said. Didn’t we agree to forget and move on? It’s a dream and just that. It’s not real and we are never going to be together, if that bothers you so much, I’m sorry.”

Feeling a bit dejected for some reason, Chanyeol sighed a little, the empty beer can on the table catching his attention before he looked back up towards Kyungsoo, “Honestly, you worry me, Kyungsoo. I understand that times have been tough for you since your father passed away earlier this year. I’m not nice to you out of my guilt. I really want to-”

“Ah, cut the crap, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo swore, getting up from the couch and into a standing position where he was across the table from Chanyeol.

All he had wanted to do this evening was eat dinner and get drunk while not watching some random reality television show. He didn’t want to deal with this, not now and not ever.

Chanyeol did not know how to respond that but he did figure Kyungsoo felt a bit like this when he had been doing the rejecting instead.

Chanyeol looked back at Kyungsoo who much to his surprise was now keeling over, almost bent in half at the waist before throwing up all over the smooth surface of the coffee table.

After throwing up, Kyungsoo fell back to the couch and found it even harder to breathe. He panicked, gasping for air but unable to feel much rushing down his lungs as it caused him to hyperventilate.

Chanyeol rushed to Kyungsoo’s side, holding him by the shoulder and asking him if everything was alright.

Suddenly, all the lights in the room felt too bright and Chanyeol’s concerned voice too loud.

Kyungsoo’s ears were ringing but he heard Chanyeol’s voice telling him to sit down and relax as he called for an ambulance. Not that he was in any position to refuse either.

Kyungsoo ended up being rushed to the hospital where he was diagnosed to have experienced a minor heart attack; the same thing that Kyungsoo’s own father died from just five months ago.

In the hospital, Chanyeol called Kyungsoo’s mother but she was abroad for a work trip and wouldn’t be able to come home for another few weeks. Chanyeol did consider calling Baekhyun for help but he decided against it, knowing Baekhyun was busy with work too and that it would be a bit weird for Chanyeol to ask Kyungsoo's estranged friend to take care of him at such a time. 

Without anyone even telling him to do so, Chanyeol decided to oversee Kyungsoo’s well being during his hospital stay and the care he would need after eventual release. Chanyeol also took it upon him to inform Kyungsoo’s faculty about what had happened.

It took Chanyeol a bit more digging to find out that heart problems were a hereditary thing in Kyungsoo’s family. And that apparently, Kyungsoo’s paternal grandfather died from another heart-related problem over ten years ago.

Kyungsoo’s was particularly worse because of the accident and the neglect he had put on his health. His only saving grace was being particularly young at 27 years old. 


	10. 30th August 2020- 8th October 2020

Kyungsoo was in the hospital for a total of two days before being discharged on the morning of the third day on a Saturday. He was young and luckier than most people with his condition, hence the early discharge. But the following Monday was already the start of the fall semester.

Therefore, Kyungsoo was given a two weeks rest period and told to come back to the university only in the third week of the semester. Kyungsoo had prepared teaching materials so the tutor replacing him for the two weeks only needed to use that.

Kyungsoo’s mother and stepfather were informed of his condition but the earliest they could return to Korea was on the following weekend. They were rather wealthy thanks to the business Kyungsoo’s mother founded with her husband after divorcing Kyungsoo’s father. Being in the middle of important business negotiations, she could not see to put Kyungsoo above it and return home.

As a consolation, she only wired a rather hefty amount of money into Kyungsoo’s account to cover expenses. After Chanyeol had called her too, she offered him money to take care of Kyungsoo in the meantime, which Chanyeol declined.

When Kyungsoo had no one, Chanyeol stepped up. He took a week off himself and the university granted the leave to him because he needed the time off to take care of Kyungsoo. He would just have to arrange for the other week where he needed to go back to work and Kyungsoo didn’t yet.

On the day Kyungsoo was discharged, Baekhyun was there to help Chanyeol bring Kyungsoo back home. Kyungsoo could walk but he was not recommended to do so to avoid strain and pushed in a wheelchair instead all the way to the car.

Kyungsoo was not feeling the best but he didn’t think he felt too bad either. He didn’t really understand why Baekhyun or Chanyeol were even making a big fuss about his condition. Personally, Kyungsoo didn’t think it was too bad and that dying wasn’t really a huge problem for him.

Nonetheless, he kept quiet the entire drive home, where Baekhyun drove and Chanyeol sat in the rear seat with Kyungsoo.

Chanyeol brought along a bag of clothes, supplies and a sleeping bag which he would need for the one week he planned to stay over at Kyungsoo’s place.

Kyungsoo never recalled agreeing to have Chanyeol stay over at this place to take care of him but he didn’t refuse it either. Kyungsoo did think that it was nice to have people do stuff for him. Arguably, it was also nice to have some company at home after being alone for a while now.

Kyungsoo just had to tolerate the fact that Chanyeol was literally ordered by the doctor to make sure he ate his medication on time, went to appointments, avoided alcohol, eat only the recommended diet and avoid stress for the next few weeks.

If it were up to him, Kyungsoo would have probably done nothing of that.

On the first day home, Baekhyun stayed around until noon to help clean up Kyungsoo’s home so he could recuperate in a conducive environment. The vomit on the table from when Kyungsoo had his heart attack had been there since and was in dire need of a cleaning.

Once Baekhyun had cleared up Kyungsoo’s room, he immediately went to sleep on his bed. In the hospital, Kyungsoo was hardly able to sleep whatnot with all the machines he was hooked up to and the nurses coming in by the hour to check on his condition.

When Kyungsoo woke up, it was almost nighttime and he could see how dark the sky already was through his window. On his bedside table, either Chanyeol or Baekhyun had left stuff for him there including his glasses, phone and a bottle of water.

Feeling hungry, Kyungsoo got out of bed and made his way to the kitchen to look for something to eat. He was still feeling tired and far from being refreshed despite being asleep for the entire afternoon. Kyungsoo blamed his health and the hospital stay for that.

Outside his room, Kyungsoo saw Chanyeol in the living room on the couch. The television was turned on but Chanyeol was on his phone.

Chanyeol noticed Kyungsoo coming and immediately turned around to look before standing up.

Chanyeol called out, “Kyungsoo! You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Kyungsoo looked around his house as if he were looking for something before turning back to Chanyeol when he didn’t think he saw anything differently. Kyungsoo merely replied, “Hungry.”

“Oh, great!” Chanyeol chimed up, “I had my house helper make a pot of ginseng chicken soup for you. I picked it up a few hours ago but I can reheat it for you. You’re going to love it. She makes the best and I always have it when I feel unwell.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kyungsoo uttered under his breath, a bit too low for Chanyeol to pick up since he had moved to the kitchen area.

Kyungsoo sat himself down on a chair at the dining table in the kitchen while Chanyeol was reheating and stirring the soup pot atop the stove. Chanyeol had his broad back turned to Kyungsoo from where he was at.

This was a normal sight for Kyungsoo A, to see his husband preparing food in the kitchen. But for Kyungsoo B, this was probably the first time he witnessed something of this kind. Realizing that, Kyungsoo sighed softly. He didn’t want to be reminded of it now.

While the soup simmered, Chanyeol laid out two plates of rice on the table since he had planned to eat with Kyungsoo. For Kyungsoo, he scooped a little bit less rice as per the doctor’s orders to cut down on carbohydrates.

He also prepared a pitcher of plain filtered water and two glasses on the table.

As Chanyeol was setting the glasses down, he turned to Kyungsoo and reminded, “After dinner, you have to take some medication and one more before you go to sleep. I’ll try to remind you when I can and on Monday, you have an appointment at nine in the morning.”

“Yeah, alright,” Kyungsoo replied a bit monotonously, looking away from Chanyeol’s face and instead noticed the watch on Chanyeol’s wrist.

Chanyeol was still wearing the same watch Kyungsoo had bought for his birthday last year.

“You’re still wearing the watch I bought,” Kyungsoo noted.

“Yeah, I like it actually. It feels just nice on me,” Chanyeol beamed, adjusting the watch on his wrist.

Kyungsoo found it a bit amusing and chuckled a little, “It’s not expensive though like all the other watches you have.”

Chanyeol chuckled too, “Yeah, I know but you gave it to me so it’s special for me. I bought the rest myself so there’s no real value other than monetary worth to me.”

“You’re weird,” Kyungsoo playfully commented.

To which Chanyeol laughed off.

After dinner, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol watched television for a bit. Kyungsoo called Baekhyun to thank him for the help and later went to sleep even before ten at night.

The next morning on Sunday, Chanyeol had to wake Kyungsoo up at six in the morning so he could take his medication on time.

The following Monday, Chanyeol drove Kyungsoo to his medical appointment where Kyungsoo’s condition was assessed, his prescription revised and new dietary plans were given out to him.

Kyungsoo was even referred to a therapist to manage his stress but he didn’t plan on going for that. He only wanted to go to the appointment with the cardiologist next week.

As the closest person to Kyungsoo, Chanyeol was also given a list of symptoms he should watch out for in Kyungsoo in case a repeat of the case would happen again.

After the appointment, Kyungsoo told Chanyeol that he was craving sweets and junk food, even if he was advised against consuming it in the first few weeks by the doctors.

Instead, Chanyeol drove Kyungsoo to his house and had the house helper make cabbage chips fried in healthy olive oil instead.

Kyungsoo was more surprised that Chanyeol had willingly invited him into his home rather by the fact that cabbage could be turned into chips.

For a while, Kyungsoo just stood there in the large doorway of Chanyeol’s house looking inside as if he was waiting for someone- Chanyeol particularly- to tell him that he wasn’t welcome and that he should leave.

But none of that happened and it was Chanyeol who actually helped guide him inside, not knowing that Kyungsoo already knew the layout of his house well enough from a different time.

Later in the evening, Kyungsoo even got to meet Chanyeol’s lawyer parents who had come back after a day in the law firm they ran together with a few other associates.

His in-laws from another time were as he vaguely managed to remember them to be. They had heard of Kyungsoo’s condition and were nice to him, inviting him to stay with Chanyeol if he wanted to.

It felt all surreal to Kyungsoo and he even wondered halfway if Chanyeol was going to reveal that this was just some elaborate prank and that he really didn’t care at all for Kyungsoo.

None of that happened though and Kyungsoo went to bed that night feeling rather fuzzy inside but still strange. He wondered what it is he did this time that caused this to happen?

Kyungsoo’s mother was due to return on Thursday but she wouldn’t be available to help care for him until Friday. Honestly, he saw no point in having all these adults fuss around him as if he was invalid or as if he was a child unable to take care of himself.

Kyungsoo believed he was more than capable of being left alone to rest and recover. It was a mild heart attack, after all, Kyungsoo justified.

Since he was first hospitalized almost a week ago, he had spent almost every waking hour with Chanyeol.

Baekhyun had also come around at least two times to send healthy food or to help around the house such as taking out the trash and doing the laundry.

Kyungsoo didn’t think he had done anything to be deserving of this treatment. Due to his self-loathing, he had assumed others thought of him the same way he thought of himself. He was wrong, though. His friends certainly liked him more than he thought.

At this point, Kyungsoo was honestly bored and wished for nothing to return to work immediately. He had been sending extra learning material for his students and even apologized to them via email for his inability to teach.

He loved teaching and was even thinking of just going back to work early because he thought he felt fine. Kyungsoo told Chanyeol about this plan, which Chanyeol vehemently disagreed with out of fear for his health.

Honestly, Kyungsoo didn’t know why he was even listening to Chanyeol when they were not even married here but he did anyway.

On Thursday night, the day before Kyungsoo was to move into his mother’s place for a week until he could return to work, he had trouble sleeping because of the frequent naps he had been taking during the day when he had nothing to do.

Kyungsoo was also not really looking forward to being at his mother’s place even if it was nicer there with bigger beds and large hot baths. He barely interacted with her and he could already predict the servants doing most of the stuff for him. But still, it was awkward to run into his mother or stepfather and then try to make small talk with them because Kyungsoo saw that he had nothing in common with them.

If he had to choose, he’d certainly choose to be with Chanyeol over his mother and stepfather anytime now.

Unable to sleep, Kyungsoo gave up on trying to sleep and walked out of his room to find Chanyeol in the kitchen making instant noodles for a late-night meal.

“Too much coffee, huh?” Kyungsoo asked, making his way to the fridge to look for some fruits to snack on and water.

“Probably,” Chanyeol agreed as he poured the soup powder into a bowl while the water boiled. Turning to Kyungsoo who was staring into the fridge, Chanyeol asked, “You have trouble sleeping too?”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo confirmed, “I checked the time and it’s three hours until I’m supposed to take my medication so I thought I might just stay up until then. Maybe if I’m tired enough, I can just sleep the day away once I’m at my mom’s place.”

“It’s not good for you to overstrain yourself though. If you can fall asleep, just do that,” Chanyeol advised, looking Kyungsoo’s way.

“I know,” Kyungsoo muttered as he washed in the sink the apple he retrieved from the fridge.

While Kyungsoo was taking out a chopping board and knife so he could slice the apple, Chanyeol was tossing the noodle block into the boiling water.

Chanyeol stood behind Kyungsoo, looking over his shoulder and observing him for a while, wanting to see that Kyungsoo was careful and not potentially hurting himself while cutting the apples up.

“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol gently called out Kyungsoo’s name, resting a hand on Kyungsoo’s elbow as his larger body almost entirely encaged Kyungsoo in his own at the edge of the kitchen counter.

“Yeah?” Kyungsoo looked up and behind from the chopping board with the knife still in his hand to meet Chanyeol’s eyes. He hadn’t really noticed yet how Chanyeol was so close in proximity to him.

“Doesn’t this feel familiar to you?” Chanyeol questioned, his eyes glancing at the boiling water in the pot on the stove and then back to Kyungsoo.

“I don’t understand. What does? Making food late at night when you can’t sleep?” Kyungsoo asked, moving away from Chanyeol to reach for a bowl to put his sliced apples into.

“This. Us. Just doing normal stuff and living together like a couple. I feel as if I’ve been doing this for a long time.” Chanyeol revealed, maintaining his distance with Kyungsoo this time, “I’ve been hesitating to talk to you about this because you ended up in the hospital the last time but I really feel a strange but close connection to you. Doing this with you feels so normal and now, I can’t feel the same when I’m alone.”

“I see,” Kyungsoo pondered, turning on the tap to wash off the knife and the chopping board.

“Do you feel the same way I do?” Chanyeol did think it was too soon to talk about it but he was desperate himself and needed the answer. He realized he was being selfish at this point.

“Been having those dreams again, huh?” Kyungsoo said as he dried his hands off, leaving Chanyeol’s question unanswered.

Chanyeol was quiet this time as he stood in the middle of Kyungsoo’s small kitchen, feeling a bit dumbfounded. Maybe, Chanyeol was hoping for a bit more than this.

Kyungsoo stirred the boiling noodles in the pot, making sure it was fully cooked before turning the gas off and straining the noodles from the hot water. While Chanyeol still stood there in his kitchen, looking for the right words to say.

Right now, Chanyeol felt a lot like Kyungsoo did previously when he had been so desperate to get his life back. The only difference was that Chanyeol was still unaware of the existence of Kyungsoo A or a different timeline for that matter.

“It’s okay, let me do that,” Chanyeol stepped in when he saw Kyungsoo preparing his instant noodles for him.

“No, let me do it for you,” Kyungsoo refused, fully knowing how Chanyeol liked his chicken soup instant noodles with less water, a raw egg broken on top and sprinkled with dried vegetables and some chicken stock.

Chanyeol conceded and only helped carry their food and drinks to the table in the dining room, where they ate with a random action movie playing on television.

Kyungsoo was just being nice to a friend because that was the way he is. But it was confusing to Chanyeol who never recalled telling Kyungsoo how he liked his instant noodles and having the same Kyungsoo prepare it exactly the way he wanted.

For the good or bad, Chanyeol didn’t know, but Kyungsoo didn’t seem bothered by what Chanyeol said nor did he ever bring it up.

Different people reacted differently even to the same thing and this only served to make Chanyeol see that maybe he was a bit too harsh on Kyungsoo, even if Chanyeol still felt somewhat justified to protect himself when it had happened.

Chanyeol felt torn and left to wonder about his actual feelings for Kyungsoo. Did he really mistake the platonic love for a friend to be that of romantic love for a partner? That was something Chanyeol had to figure out still. 

Kyungsoo moved in with his mother for the time being and Chanyeol was able to return to work and his research the following week while Kyungsoo remained resting at home.

On the downtime, Chanyeol still did come to visit to spend time with Kyungsoo and check up on his condition.

Since Kyungsoo’s mother lived in a nice area with a park and a man-made lake, he and Chanyeol were able to stroll down the place in the evenings usually about an hour before sunset when it was cooler.

Kyungsoo didn’t really like being dragged outside as his idea of resting was mostly being sedentary at home but it was per the doctor’s orders to start doing light non-strenuous exercises. To encourage Kyungsoo to eat healthier too, Chanyeol made it a point to eat the same food when they were together.

Chanyeol even advised Kyungsoo that if he felt the cravings to consume alcohol, he should give Chanyeol a close so they could talk over the phone or play an online game together as a distraction from the craving.

It felt nice to finally not be alone again but Kyungsoo was still very afraid and uncomfortable at being so close to someone else.

Deep down inside, Kyungsoo was still convinced that none of this was real and that Chanyeol had not really forgiven him for the past.

Kyungsoo returned to work in the third week of the semester but he only came to teach his classes and stayed only for a bit before going back home to rest and avoid potential stress. He had also decided on his own volition to move out of his mother’s place and back into the small detached house, his father had left for him.

In a week, Kyungsoo took at least two to three days off when he had no classes. He had also put his own research on hold because it involved a lot of meetings, conferences, and travels that could be stressful for him.

Naturally, it also meant seeing less of Chanyeol who was also occupied with his tutoring and research progress. Chanyeol also had fewer reasons to come around to visit Kyungsoo now that he was getting better.

Furthermore, Kyungsoo also still actively made up excuses to not go out with Chanyeol when invited to because he wanted to avoid trouble that might arise because of his feelings. 

The distance was good, Kyungsoo believed.

Kyungsoo only really returned to his full-time schedule in early October, a bit over a month since the day he experienced the mild heart attack.

By then, fall had arrived. Where the temperature was much cooler, the weather much wetter and the season’s foliage in its full array of gold, orange, and red.

The university campus was known for its magnificent trees and greenery that often became a popular photography spot at this time of the year.

Just passing through the pathway between the trees to get to the bus stop outside one evening, Kyungsoo passed by a few student couples on a date and other students helping to take each other’s pictures with the foliage as the backdrop.

Some of them were even students Kyungsoo were teaching or had taught before. Recognizing them, Kyungsoo smiled to himself at the joy of youth which reminded him of his younger days.

While he was supposed to only be 27 years old here and not that much older than the students, Kyungsoo considered himself to be 41 years old when adding the 37 years he lived as Kyungsoo A and the 4 years he had spent as Kyungsoo B.

It had rained that afternoon and the ground was still wet with some puddles yet to evaporate down the cemented pathway between the trees. The sun was close to setting, leaving the sky with orange streaks that matched the leaves on the trees. The air was cool, just nice and crisp, with the fresh feeling as a residue after the rain.

When Kyungsoo began to feel his socks getting wet, he stopped to check his shoes and found out that the sole of his left shoe was coming out.

Kyungsoo managed to hop a bit to a nearby bench where he sat down on a dry spot to assess the condition of his shoe. It was an old shoe which Kyungsoo wore often because of the comfort so it wasn’t too surprising that it was coming apart now.

Kyungsoo attempting pushing the sole back to the shoe, hoping that maybe some of the glue would stick long enough for him to use it to walk to the bus station.

When that ceased to work, Kyungsoo opened up his bag pack to retrieve a stapler. Where he then heard someone calling out his name.

Kyungsoo looked left and right, squinting his eyes behind his glasses to see who it was before seeing Chanyeol jogging up to him. So much for trying to avoid him, Kyungsoo thought.

“I thought you left already,” Chanyeol commented, standing by the bench because he did not see any other dry spots other than the one already occupied by Kyungsoo.

“I’m trying to,” Kyungsoo sighed as he held the stapler in one hand and his shoe in the other.

“Did the sole of your shoe come undone?” Chanyeol asked, plain obviously.

“Yeah but it’s old anyway. Just trying to keep it on until I can get home,” Kyungsoo responded, trying to find the right place to staple his sole onto.

“No, don’t do that. You’ll hurt your feet,” Chanyeol cautioned, halting Kyungsoo by holding him by the shoulder.

“Then what do you suggest? You don’t suppose you have an extra pair of shoes I can borrow do you?” Kyungsoo remarked.

“I don’t but even if I did, they’d be too big for you,” Chanyeol surmised.

“Of course,” Kyungsoo shrugged, half-serious when he said, “I guess the only other option is for you to carry me on your back.”

Kyungsoo then returned to attempt stapling the sole of his shoe when Chanyeol agreed to it.

“Okay. I’ll carry you on my back all the way to my car so I can drive you home,” Chanyeol announced with his chest puffed out as if he was proud to say so.

“You won’t do that,” Kyungsoo chuckled, genuinely believing it was still a joke.

That was until Chanyeol lowered himself down in a near squatting position with his back turned and telling Kyungsoo to “hop on” while pointing to his back.

Kyungsoo was taken aback for a bit to witness how determined Chanyeol was to really carry him home. He just sat there on the half wet bench with a shoe in one hand and a stapler in the other, watching Chanyeol wiggle around inviting Kyungsoo to climb onto his back.

Maybe Kyungsoo didn’t want Chanyeol to embarrass himself or maybe because Kyungsoo wanted to know how it would feel again, he somehow went along with the idea and allowed Chanyeol to give him a piggyback.

The students seemed amused at their antics too which Chanyeol and Kyungsoo both laughed off and found amusing.

Kyungsoo wrapped his arms around Chanyeol as the latter carried him up, where Kyungsoo was closer to the trees above. Kyungsoo looked up to the glistening sky after the rain and for the first time in a long time, he felt happy.


	11. 9th October 2020- 25th December 2021

Often before sleep, Kyungsoo would lie down in bed and imagine Chanyeol lying down there next to him with arms around Kyungsoo’s waist. Kyungsoo would imagine smiling back at Chanyeol on the other side of the bed and running his hands through Chanyeol’s hair.

Kyungsoo imagined a vibrant household filled with the laughter of their children and the love they had for one another.

While this was all true and reality once upon a time, none of that existed here.

Kyungsoo went to bed alone every night in a small and cold bed meant for one. He woke up alone to a quiet and empty house devoid of warmth and vibrance.

The future he had come from where he was married to Chanyeol and had children was what Kyungsoo could describe the peak of his life. But if Kyungsoo had the power to turn back time, he would have chosen to never know Chanyeol.

Only so he would never know this pain he felt every single day of his life here. Not once had the pain ever lessened or got better. Kyungsoo only found new ways to distract himself from the pain.

When Kyungsoo saw couples holding hands or walking out with their children, he tried to picture that it was him and Chanyeol together. But due to bad experiences, he would get scared, as if someone would be reading his thoughts and severely judge him for fantasizing of such things.

Kyungsoo didn’t know where he exactly went wrong but he was convinced that his entire existence here was at fault for his misery and for his failure.

He thought that maybe if he was better looking, smarter, more confident, more outgoing or just simply someone else then maybe Chanyeol would fall in love with him. At the peak of his pain, Kyungsoo just wanted to be anyone else but himself.

But Kyungsoo had pride in being himself too and he wasn’t willing to be someone else for the sake of it either.

Recognizing that he could not have one over the other, Kyungsoo gave up. He was never going to be with Chanyeol outside of his dreams and he learned to accept it, even if he truly wanted it to happen deep down inside.

Some people remained alone for their entire life and Kyungsoo had already accepted that he was going to be one of them. Life was far from fair and bad things happened to good people a lot of times.

Kyungsoo knew it wasn’t wise to base his happiness entirely around others but for someone like him who had achieved his true happiness somewhere else in others, it was hard for him to find something else elsewhere.

While Kyungsoo might have been able to repress his feelings until a point where he almost forgot he had them, he truly never ever stopped loving Chanyeol.

But even when Chanyeol began to fall for Kyungsoo here, Kyungsoo still had a hard time believing that any of this was real.

There was no way this was real. Good things didn’t happen to him, Kyungsoo was convinced. One day, all of this would be taken from him and he’d be left with nothing all over again.

**

It was a strange feeling at first for Kyungsoo when he didn’t have to be alone anymore. He didn’t ever think that he’d stop being alone. Because eventually, he was spending almost all of his spare time with Chanyeol.

Chanyeol asked to eat together, asked to hang out and wanted to bring Kyungsoo to nice places. Chanyeol wanted to hold hands, wanted to hug and wanted to just be around Kyungsoo. He even willingly offered to drive Kyungsoo to doctor’s appointments and back and forth from home to university almost every day.

Somehow, Kyungsoo was finding himself in all these situations that he only used to be able to imagine.

Kyungsoo didn’t really understand why Chanyeol wanted to do all of this for him just for the sake of spending time together. Kyungsoo didn’t think that Chanyeol even liked him that much.

But the thing that felt most strange to Kyungsoo was that Chanyeol was the one initiating all of these. It was no longer Kyungsoo doing all the chasing and hoping Chanyeol would fall for him. It was Chanyeol who was putting all that effort now.

It was certainly a better feeling even if strange.

In the winter after his heart attack, Kyungsoo managed to get into an argument with another doctorate student in his faculty who was suspected of stealing other student’s research, Kyungsoo’s own included.

Kyungsoo was embroiled into a shouting match with the said student in their office. It was Chanyeol who restrained Kyungsoo and calmed him down, rubbed his back and reminding him to take deep breaths because it was risky for him to get so angry due to his health condition.

Not used to being so angry, Kyungsoo later broke down in tears outside in the hallway. Kyungsoo thought that his tears would be seen as a sign of his weakness but Chanyeol didn’t see it that way.

Chanyeol stayed beside Kyungsoo, offered him tissue papers and a cup of water before looking up funny videos on his phone to show to Kyungsoo to make him feel better before supporting his next course of action. 

Kyungsoo laughed amidst the tears and he felt comfortable even in such a time. It was nice to feel taken care of even if Kyungsoo convinced himself that this did not really mean that there was anything between himself and Chanyeol.

Chanyeol was just being his usual nice self. He was like this to everyone too, Kyungsoo believed. Kyungsoo didn’t think he was anything special in Chanyeol’s life.

Kyungsoo might have even convinced himself that if it were not due to grief and loneliness, he would probably never have even ended up married to Chanyeol as Kyungsoo A.

Maybe, they weren’t truly compatible with each other. Kyungsoo A was lucky but Kyungsoo B was not.

**

In the short break Chanyeol and Kyungsoo had before the spring semester began in March 2021, Chanyeol decided he wanted to stay over at Kyungsoo’s place.

Kyungsoo wanted to refuse Chanyeol and give excuses because he was more comfortable being alone but he ended up saying yes and letting Chanyeol stay over for that one week in late February.

It was almost a year since the death of Kyungsoo’s father in this timeline. It did take Kyungsoo a bit of time to realize that the reason Chanyeol insisting on sleeping over was because he didn’t want Kyungsoo to be alone at such a time.

Kyungsoo still chose to not acknowledge that fact though. Thinking of how much Chanyeol actually cared for him would hurt Kyungsoo in the long run because he believed that he could never have Chanyeol anymore.

While Chanyeol was staying over, he usually woke up first in the morning but on the one day Kyungsoo did, he decided to go out and buy coffee and then come home and cook breakfast.

Kyungsoo slept in his late father’s room so Chanyeol could sleep in his room instead, during the latter’s stay. Kyungsoo thought it was bad taste to let someone sleep in his late father’s room, so he had given up his own room in the meantime.

The previous night, Chanyeol had stayed up a bit late watching movies even after Kyungsoo had excused himself to go to bed.

While Kyungsoo was cooking that morning, Chanyeol woke up and left the room to find Kyungsoo stirring the pot on the stove.

Seeing the two coffee cups on the dining table, Chanyeol assumed one was for him and immediately went to grab a cup to drink. Upon tasting the coffee with a single sip, Chanyeol had to look at the label on the cupholder.

There was no mistaking it. It was Chanyeol’s favorite caffe latte from the shop he liked and in exactly the right proportion of double espresso shots and with soy milk instead of dairy.

Knowing Kyungsoo wasn’t a big fan of coffee nor did he drink much of it, Chanyeol never bothered to talk to Kyungsoo about the exact order of the type of coffee he liked to drink. But yet, it seemed that Kyungsoo knew.

Chanyeol just thought that Kyungsoo had been attentive because he drank it almost every morning, instead of the fact that Kyungsoo would know the type of drink his husband from a different time loved.

Nonetheless, Chanyeol was personally touched by such a gesture.

Kyungsoo had heard Chanyeol coming and greeted him a good morning. Before he could turn around to face Chanyeol to tell him to prepare the plates, Kyungsoo jolted when he felt strong arms wrap around his waist.

Kyungsoo froze with a soup ladle in his right hand as the kimchi stew simmered in the pot.

Chanyeol was hugging him from the back and was even leaning down to rest his forehead against the back of Kyungsoo’s head. They were so close that Kyungsoo could feel the rise and fall of Chanyeol’s chest against his back.

Kyungsoo’s first thought was that Chanyeol was still half-asleep and had mistaken him for someone else. There was no way this was meant for him.

For all Kyungsoo could have known, Chanyeol might have feelings for someone else and had mistaken Kyungsoo for that “someone else”. That was the only plausible explanation for this.

Before Kyungsoo could tell Chanyeol that he had the wrong person, Chanyeol had moved his arms to wrap around Kyungsoo by the chest.

“Kyungsoo, good morning,” Chanyeol greeted, looking over Kyungsoo’s shoulder at the soup cooking on the stove, “That smells good.”

“Uh…yeah, good morning,” Kyungsoo replied back.

“I can’t wait to taste your cooking. You always make the best food that I like,” Chanyeol praised, still wrapped snug against Kyungsoo.

“Thanks,” Kyungsoo said in return, not knowing what else to say or do in this situation.

When Chanyeol had said his name, Kyungsoo didn’t think that this was a mistake anymore. But still, it didn’t feel right for him.

There had to be something that triggered all these actions from Chanyeol and Kyungsoo didn’t think that it was because Chanyeol actually liked him. There must be another reason, Kyungsoo believed, he just didn’t know what it was yet.

Kyungsoo was unable to fathom of a present where he was with Chanyeol, not after all the hurt and bad experiences he had been through. Not after he had painfully convinced himself that an idea of him and Chanyeol only existed in his head in a past memory.

So much that Kyungsoo didn’t even realize that he began dating Chanyeol.

What Chanyeol saw as cute dates between them, Kyungsoo saw as two friends hanging out with each other. When Chanyeol started holding hands with Kyungsoo when they walked in public, Kyungsoo only thought that it was because maybe Chanyeol just liked to do it.

When Chanyeol first kissed Kyungsoo outside his house after dropping him off for the day, Kyungsoo thought that maybe Chanyeol just wanted to kiss somebody and he didn’t mind.

When another fellow student asked Kyungsoo if he was dating Chanyeol now due to how close they’ve grown to be, Kyungsoo denied it because he was truly convinced Chanyeol only saw him as a close friend with whom he liked to be affectionate with.

“He probably likes someone else. I’m not his type,” Kyungsoo told anyone who asked, genuinely believing his own words. 

But despite Kyungsoo’s denial, they grew so close so much that if someone was looking for either of them, they could just contact the other to get the message across. Some of their classmates and professors even joked that they were essentially the “same person”.

It was almost like when they were married and Kyungsoo smiled to himself at the thought he believed to be mere fantasy. 

During the summer, Kyungsoo began to actively work on his research again once his health improved. He traveled pretty often around to various locations for his research, only for him to come back with food poisoning due to some street food he ate while abroad. 

Kyungsoo had to be hospitalized after he fainted due to dehydration as a result of the constant vomiting and diarrhea because of the food poisoning.

The nurses had to make Kyungsoo wear adult diapers due to his diarrhea and his face was stained with tears, snot, and vomit. Despite so, Chanyeol still kissed Kyungsoo on the cheek and said he was beautiful, but Kyungsoo still didn’t believe that Chanyeol actually liked him.

Kyungsoo was not convinced, not even when he woke up in bed and Chanyeol’s face was the first thing he saw in the morning. Not even by the fact that they had made love the previous night and Chanyeol had repeatedly told Kyungsoo how in love he was during the throes of pleasure.

Kyungsoo had said his “I love you”s back too but he didn’t think that it meant anything to Chanyeol. He merely assumed that Chanyeol was just saying those words for the sake of it, so Kyungsoo just played along.

In September, Chanyeol’s older sister had her wedding and Kyungsoo was invited. After the reception, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were driving back home down the empty streets in the middle of the night.

Chanyeol drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on Kyungsoo’s lap.

“I’d sure love to get married someday too,” Chanyeol said, remembering his sister’s wedding.

“I hope you get to also,” Kyungsoo responded in return, truly wanting Chanyeol to be happy even if that happiness did not include Kyungsoo himself.

Chanyeol continued, “I want to spend my life with someone who is kind and understanding.”

“That’s fair enough. I hope you get to meet that person,” Kyungsoo replied, looking out of the car window and missing the way Chanyeol briefly glanced upon him and smiled.

Chanyeol already had a person in mind. It was Kyungsoo and Chanyeol thought it was actually rather adorable how clueless Kyungsoo could be.

**

On Christmas morning, Chanyeol woke up extra early while Kyungsoo was still asleep, to prepare a breakfast of honey toast, scrambled eggs, and sausages.

By then, Chanyeol had essentially moved into Kyungsoo’s house. He had even bought a new and larger bed so they could sleep together in Kyungsoo’s room instead of attempting to cram on the old single bed.

Even then, Kyungsoo still didn’t think that Chanyeol really liked him.

Once breakfast and all the preparations were ready, Chanyeol gently woke Kyungsoo up and invited him to the kitchen to have Christmas breakfast.

Still partially asleep and sporting a bedhead while still in his pajamas, Kyungsoo dragged himself to the dining table with his phone in hand.

Kyungsoo placed his phone down on the table and yawned, squinting his eyes to have a clearer look at the food served on the table. He wasn’t wearing his glasses yet so he couldn’t see too well.

Chanyeol was nowhere to be seen and Kyungsoo thought he was just getting something in the room.

Feeling hungry, Kyungsoo picked up a slice of the honey toast to munch on until Chanyeol returned so they could eat together.

While he was slowly chewing and with a slice of honey toast in one hand, Kyungsoo felt a tap on his shoulder and he turned around on the chair to look behind.

At first, Kyungsoo was stunned, mouth still full of toast as he began to process what was actually going on.

Chanyeol, much more dressed in a button-up white shirt and black trousers with his hair neatly fixed in his usual style, was kneeling down on one knee on the floor with a ring in his hand.

Chanyeol looked a bit nervous but he smiled and managed to say, “Kyungsoo, will you marry me?”

Kyungsoo gulped, swallowing down the remaining of the toast and cupped a hand to his mouth as he gasped in utter shock. He had a hard time believing that this was real. 

It was not until that moment that Kyungsoo was convinced that Chanyeol actually did like him.


	12. 25th December 2021- 18th January 2030- 12th May 2023

Kyungsoo didn’t consider himself a smart man, maybe above average at best. But even after the whole time traveling fiasco he had landed himself in, he would certainly think that it was stupid for him to say no to Chanyeol who was literally on one knee to want to marry him and spend the rest of their lives together.

Not until it happened to him, Kyungsoo had a hard time believing that he was on a path on course to this one specific moment.

Kyungsoo believed he had suffered enough and that he deserved to be happy now, after all that. He was way past done worrying about the ramifications of his actions. He had already changed the course of events permanently just by waking up one morning as Kyungsoo B, none of which he had control over.

It was considered a big move that might further complicate events to come but it didn’t stop Kyungsoo from saying yes to Chanyeol and agreeing to get married.

This was literally the stuff of his dreams and he wasn’t going to deny Chanyeol like this. He had loved Chanyeol in the previous universe and in this one and maybe in the next one if it exists.

From now on, he was going to be happy.

Two weeks after they were engaged on Christmas Day, and after the holiday season was over, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol finally decided to tell everyone of the happy news before they moved into planning the wedding.

Kyungsoo’s mother seemed a bit in disbelief in the beginning. She could hardly believe that Kyungsoo would ever even get married as she had assumed him to be the type to stay single. She began to wonder if Kyungsoo was pregnant, suspecting it to be a shotgun wedding, and also had a hard time trying to believe it when she learned otherwise.

It amused Kyungsoo at first because while that might have been true in the world of Kyungsoo A, it wasn’t the case here.

Chanyeol’s parents were ecstatic to learn that he was going to get married since they were still high on the euphoria of Chanyeol’s sister’s recent wedding, and had been hoping he’d be following in her footsteps.

Due to that, they were the first to call up wedding planners and start looking up venues for Chanyeol’s wedding, even before Chanyeol or Kyungsoo had even decided on anything on their own.

In the graduate student group chat, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were bombarded with texts of congratulations and requests to see any pictures of the ring or the engagement. While Kyungsoo obliged to show them the ring, he had to turn them down for pictures of the moment because he was in his pajamas and half asleep when Chanyeol proposed.

It wasn’t the stereotypical proposal at a romantic candle-lit dinner or at a scenic beach during sunset but Kyungsoo didn’t care and Chanyeol knew this too.

This was just one of the many reasons why Kyungsoo fell in love with Chanyeol in the first place. He knew how Kyungsoo loved simplicity.

Kyungsoo decided to tell Baekhyun of the proposal during a lunch outing one weekend, with the intention of asking Baekhyun to be his best man. For in Kyungsoo A’s timeline, Baekhyun was also his best man.

Similarly, Kyungsoo had agreed to be Baekhyun best’s man whenever he got married but even by the time Kyungsoo disappeared from the Kyungsoo A timeline, Baekhyun remained an unmarried man.

Since graduating and landing a job, Baekhyun was on his third girlfriend while Kyungsoo always remained loyal to Chanyeol even during a time when it seemed impossible for them to ever be together.

Baekhyun almost choked on his drink when Kyungsoo announced to him about the proposal and wedding. He was surprised, to say the least, and even thought of it as a prank at first, even if Kyungsoo didn’t seem like the person to be pulling off pranks.

Baekhyun had to even call Chanyeol, who was away at a conference at the time, to ask for confirmation that Kyungsoo was not pulling something on him.

Even in Baekhyun’s eyes, Kyungsoo appeared as someone who seemed unlikely to get married due to how hung up he was on a specific person, which was Chanyeol- also considering the kind of problems he had with Chanyeol not too long ago. 

At the end of the call where Chanyeol constantly affirmed that they were indeed going to get married, Baekhyun was happy for Kyungsoo and maybe even started to look back upon on his own failed relationships.

But nonetheless, Baekhyun agreed to be Kyungsoo’s best man for an early April wedding.

While Chanyeol and Kyungsoo had wanted a fall wedding and hence more time to prepare until then, they had to cave in with Chanyeol’s parents' request to get married as soon as possible since they had agreed to foot the entire cost of the wedding out of their own pocket.

It was something they had to compromise with because neither Chanyeol nor Kyungsoo had much money of their own outside from support from their well to do parents. Not until they were tenured as professors that was.

The next three months were hectic whatnot with all the wedding ceremony arrangements, legal wedding paperwork, classes, and their academic research which they had to attend to.

Kyungsoo thought that he was able to handle it well. After all, he was already experienced with this since he had done this before as Kyungsoo A.

In fact, Kyungsoo B probably had it easier because he didn’t have two young children to care for during such a hectic period of his life.

In a way, it was a blessing but it made Kyungsoo sad to realize that his children and father wouldn’t be at his side during the wedding like it was for Kyungsoo A. It felt sadder when Kyungsoo remembered that he didn’t have a single piece of evidence to hold onto from his previous life, for him to look back on should he feel like it.

But at the time, Kyungsoo didn’t see that as a loss because he was optimistic at how the rest of his future here as Kyungsoo B would unfold. Maybe, there were better things in store for him.

He believed that he was on the right track now and that it was all just uphill from here on.

**

On April 3rd, 2022, Kyungsoo married Chanyeol under a shaded canopy in a garden wedding during a light drizzle, with pink blossoms in full bloom on the trees surrounding them.

Previously, Kyungsoo A also had an outdoor wedding but at a private park and during the summer. In both times, Kyungsoo also opted to wear a white suit for his wedding.

Kyungsoo was finally married, albeit almost 4 years later than Kyungsoo A did. But somehow, things were different but yet also the same, Kyungsoo thought.

Even though Kyungsoo technically married for the second time- albeit to the same person- he maintained that his wedding day was the happiest day of his life.

Kyungsoo didn’t really care for all the traditions of having a wedding or the joy of being the center of attention on the day. What he really cared about was the vows because it was proof that the person he loved the most also felt the same way for him.

Having a ring on his finger and a legal paper saying that he was married to Chanyeol was just the icing on the cake.

After they were married, Chanyeol moved into Kyungsoo’s modest home. Occasionally, they did spend some weekends at Chanyeol’s fancy home where his parents lived too.

Not two months since being married, Kyungsoo found out he was pregnant at six weeks along with a due date set for mid to late December of the same year. When the ultrasound revealed that Kyungsoo was carrying twins, he almost fell out of the chair in the doctor’s office.

While male pregnancy was uncommon, twin pregnancies were not but still equally risky. Knowing this from previous experiences in a life he no longer led, Kyungsoo quickly made the necessary arrangements for a cesarean birth on December 17th, 2022; a date he had chose with Chanyeol and with the approval of the doctor.

Later in the pregnancy, an ultrasound revealed that Kyungsoo was carrying twin boys, although he would only know if they were fraternal or identical later on after birth. But if according to the life of Kyungsoo A, they would be fraternal.

Kyungsoo wasn’t sure if the life of Kyungsoo A was being replicated here in a jumbled up order or if it was purely coincidental.

There were a lot of things he didn’t understand. This was just one of the many.

Kyungsoo carried on with his teaching and research even during his pregnancy, only beginning to take time off starting in November, deferring his doctorate degree process by one semester.

Due to circumstances, he and Chanyeol had to move into Chanyeol’s parent’s house, where there would be extra help around to manage the pregnancy and the twins when they arrived.

On the morning of December 17th, 2022, just as planned, the twins were delivered and Chanyeol agreed with Kyungsoo’s choice of names; Park Minjung and Park Minhyun. They were fraternal twins, born over three years later than the twin sons of Kyungsoo A.

Chanyeol didn’t ask how Kyungsoo was inspired to name their sons. Kyungsoo was partially grateful for because he didn’t know how to truthfully explain that he had experienced giving birth twice to a total of four sons now.

If there was one benefit of being in Kyungsoo’s B shoes and repeating what he already knew and done before in another time- other than being more knowledgeable in his studies- it would be the fact that he knew how to do this parenting thing better.

It was still tiring but Kyungsoo was glad to know how to properly deal with the challenges of being a parent of young twins while maintaining his also relatively new marriage and trying to complete his P.h.D.

Sometimes, Kyungsoo would gaze upon the sleeping faces of his twins in their crib and wonder if they’d grow up to look the twin sons of Kyungsoo A. It was still too early to tell since they were still babies and their prominent features had not yet set in.

They did share the same two parents so they shouldn’t look too different, even if Kyungsoo knew that they were highly likely two different children he had with Chanyeol instead.

Although he did miss the Minjung and Minhyun of Kyungsoo’s A time, he knew he would also eventually come to learn this version of Minjung and Minhyun.

Kyungsoo only returned to his studies and research in the spring semester of March 2023 after taking time off following the twins’ birth.

In the fall of the same year, Chanyeol graduated with his P.h.D in law and was absorbed as a teaching staff of the university’s faculty. Even in Kyungsoo A’s timeline, Chanyeol also obtained his P.h.D earlier.

Kyungsoo finally graduated with his P.h.D in East Asian history in the fall of 2024 before also being similarly absorbed as a member of the faculty. For him, this was the second time obtaining his P.h.D. Frankly, he thought that he deserved the title of a double P.h.D for all this effort.

Upon obtaining the official certificate granting him the title of a “Doctor” in his field, Kyungsoo wondered why he even bothered to study and redo his research all over again just for an official certification of it, when he knew that he had earned it.

Then he remembered how hard he had attempted to get Chanyeol to fall in love with him all over again, in the name of trying to regain the life he lost as Kyungsoo A. After that, Kyungsoo stopped wondering or asking himself why he put himself through the same struggle twice now.

If there were a few things that remained the same, it was when Chanyeol and Kyungsoo decided to buy a plot of land and build a house of their own. The process was carried out in the same year, 2028, as the timeline of Kyungsoo A.

The house was built on the exact spot of Kyungsoo A’s home. Kyungsoo had been the one to suggest the location to Chanyeol who also decided that it would be the best place in terms of cost and safety for their family.

Kyungsoo also hired the same architect to build their house and from memory, Kyungsoo requested the layout to be as similar to what he was able to remember.

Chanyeol had a say too in how the house would be and Kyungsoo was delighted to learn that Chanyeol had pretty much the same tastes here too, which ended up in the house turning out almost the same as in Kyungsoo A’s time when it was completed the following year.

Despite it all and all the pain Kyungsoo had been through to get here, Chanyeol had mostly been the one constant in his life.

Even though Kyungsoo knew that this was a different Chanyeol than the one Kyungsoo A was married to, Kyungsoo never felt that he was in love with a different person. It always felt the same to him because his love was unconditional for Chanyeol.

And as soon as Kyungsoo knew it, he was waking up in that dream home of his in a bed next to the man he loved with his all of his heart in this world and the previous one. Where the house was filled with warmth and the cheery laughter and presence of his children.

It seemed that the rain had finally stopped after so long and that the sun was once more shining down upon him. Kyungsoo thought that he had finally made it back onto the path of Kyungsoo A’s life, even with some stuff delayed, coming early or simply out of order.

Now, Kyungsoo thought that he could finally live his life continuing on from where he left off.

**

Shortly after New Year’s in 2030, Kyungsoo went to his quarterly medical checkups which were especially for his heart condition due to a family history of heart problems and having experienced a heart attack almost ten years ago.

Kyungsoo went to the doctor’s appointment alone this time while Chanyeol was at work and the kids were at home with a nanny during the winter school break.

Kyungsoo’s 37th birthday was just a bit over a week away but his doctor suggested that his heart age was that of a man more than 10 years older his chronological age, brought on due to family history, past ailments and his largely unhealthy lifestyle before getting married.

While it did raise some alarms for more concern, Kyungsoo actually found it partially amusing considering the fact that he had actually experienced living almost 51 years of life; 37 as Kyungsoo A and soon to be 14 years as Kyungsoo B.

That was something he had to keep to himself though. It would take a lot of convincing and maybe even blind faith to fully convince someone that he had indeed come from a different time.

A few weeks later, Kyungsoo was asked by the faculty to meet a man who was interested to sell a purportedly ancient scroll.

Up until that moment, Kyungsoo had almost forgotten about him forging the scroll and about him breaking into the still in construction house over 10 years ago to plant it there.

However, it proved Kyungsoo right though.

If he did not plant the scroll there with the right instructions to sell it back to himself, he would have never received it. Somehow, Kyungsoo A did receive the scroll even when he did nothing to ensure he would receive it. Both of these occurrences in the timeline of Kyungsoo A and Kyungsoo B also managed to happen at around the same time too.

Then, Kyungsoo began to worry. In the past 14 years, he had a general idea of what the future would be like, where the knowledge sometimes played to his advantage or even disadvantage. While some events were mixed up in terms of when and how it happened, everything mostly stayed the same.

But Kyungsoo knew nothing past the date of January 18th, 2030; the last day he spent as Kyungsoo A before waking up as Kyungsoo B.

Kyungsoo didn’t think that there was anything bad to continue past that date. But he was scared of the unknown. He had never made it past the date and he feared something awry happening again, where he would once again lose everything he had painfully worked for.

In the days leading up to January 18th, 2030, Kyungsoo tried to mask his anxiety and restlessness over the impending date.

He wanted to appear strong in front of his children. He didn’t want Chanyeol to worry too much about him. Kyungsoo had long decided that this was a battle he had to fight alone. 

There was no one he could talk to about this. No one would believe him. In fact, after what Kyungsoo had been through, he thought that he might have been crazy to accept such a fate that had befallen him.

So far, Kyungsoo thought that was doing a good job. That was until the night of January 18th, 2030.

It had been a Friday night so Kyungsoo allowed the children to stay up a bit late and even accompanied them to watch a few cartoons before putting them to sleep.

In Kyungsoo A’s timeline, his children were about to start middle school this year but here they were still in elementary school. Kyungsoo A’s older children were able to go to bed by themselves but Kyungsoo B’s younger children still needed a bit more attention.

Kyungsoo remembered this night well because it was the last he had as Kyungsoo A, where he had been in his office with Chanyeol before bed. Where Chanyeol was drinking coffee before offering to take out the bottle of whiskey.

That night, he did spend some time in the home office with Chanyeol but made no comments on his husband drinking coffee late at night. Which led to Chanyeol never taking out the bottle of whiskey and them going to bed together a bit earlier.

Chanyeol went to sleep first that night and Kyungsoo remained unable to sleep. Kyungsoo was too worried about himself to even try and sleep, fearing that he might wake up in a world where his husband hated him and his children didn’t exist and everything he had worked for was lost.

If his worry wasn’t the only thing keeping him up, it was also his racing heart and his limbs feeling tingly all over again as if he was experiencing another panic attack.

While Chanyeol slept soundly in the space next to him, Kyungsoo remained awake and sitting up in bed while scratching his nails and looking at particularly nothing in the dark surroundings. Kyungsoo didn’t want to turn on the nightlight, not wanting to disturb Chanyeol’s sleep.

But eventually, Chanyeol did stir from his sleep to see Kyungsoo still awake and nipping on his thumb, illuminated by the minimal lighting coming from the street outside through the glass panes of their window.

“Soo, why are you not asleep?” Chanyeol asked, groggily, moving towards Kyungsoo on the bed to rest his head on Kyungsoo’s lap.

“I can’t sleep,” Kyungsoo answered, not lying but not telling the full truth either.

“Hmm…,” Chanyeol hummed, trying to keep his eyes open so he wouldn’t fall back asleep too soon, “But you didn’t even drink coffee just now.”

“I know, I didn’t. I guess I just feel…worried,” Kyungsoo attempted to explain, resting a hand on Chanyeol’s head lying on his lap, combing his fingers through his husband’s hair. It was calming to do that and for a moment, Kyungsoo felt that he could join Chanyeol and go back to sleep too.

“What are you worried about?” Chanyeol asked, “Maybe I can help?”

“I don’t know…,” Kyungsoo trailed off before he dared to continue, “I’m afraid that I fall asleep, I might not wake up in this world anymore. I don’t really know what I’m saying but I know I’m afraid. I guess that it might just be anxiety.”

Hearing that, Chanyeol lifted himself up from Kyungsoo’s lap and moved into a sitting position. He hugged Kyungsoo and rested his forehead against Kyungsoo’s.

Chanyeol remained quiet for a while. His breath was steady and that sort of calmed Kyungsoo down too a bit, as his breathe too gradually synced up with Chanyeol’s calm one.

“I’m here, Kyungsoo. You’re not alone. I may not understand how you feel but I know you’re afraid and your feelings are valid,” Chanyeol assured, calmly.

Kyungsoo nodded, closing his eyes as his forehead was still pressed against Chanyeol’s, only now realizing how tired he really was. Kyungsoo managed to catch himself before dozing off though, still afraid of what was to come.

Chanyeol moved again and coaxed Kyungsoo to lie down next to him, which Kyungsoo obliged to.

Lying down in bed close to each other, Chanyeol once again assured Kyungsoo, “Go to sleep, Kyungsoo. It will be okay. I’m here. I’ll watch over you. I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“Okay,” Kyungsoo sighed, already on the verge of falling asleep once his head had hit the pillow. He fully trusted Chanyeol.

“Alright,” Chanyeol smiled amidst his own sleepiness, holding Kyungsoo’s hand beneath the sheets.

With hand in hand and their faces close to each other as they shared each other’s warmth, Chanyeol went back to sleep and Kyungsoo finally went to sleep.

It seemed so peaceful.

**

Kyungsoo woke up the following morning, startled, due to the bright light from the windows and the loud playful noises of children playing outside his room.

Kyungsoo was short-sighted but nowhere near being blind and even without glasses, he could clearly tell that he was in a different place than where he went to bed. This was not a room he had ever been or slept in.

The window beside the bed suggested that Kyungsoo was in a high rise building, such as an apartment. Kyungsoo never recalled living in an apartment for his entire life.

Already panicking, Kyungsoo turned to the bedside table where he found his glasses and a phone which thankfully this time could be unlocked with a fingerprint instead of a passcode he couldn't remember.

Kyungsoo’s mouth dropped in horror when the date on the phone read May 12th, 2023. He was on the verge of breaking in tears but before he could confirm it, Kyungsoo rushed out of this unfamiliar room.

He heard children playing outside the room. Maybe, his children did exist in this world too.

Since it was an apartment, the room opened directly to the living room. Where Kyungsoo saw two male children who appeared to be twins too playing with a toy set on the floor. They appeared younger too, around pre-school age.

The kids squealed “Appa!” the moment they saw Kyungsoo and rushed up to hug his leg. But Kyungsoo was still too shocked to understand what was going on.

His next instinct was to find Chanyeol when an adult male appeared from the apartment’s kitchen, telling the kids in a cheerful tone to keep quiet since “appa” was still sleeping.

But this voice was different. It was familiar but not Chanyeol’s.

Kyungsoo looked up to see Baekhyun wiping his hands on a towel, smiling at him and greeting Kyungsoo a “good morning”.

“No, no,” Kyungsoo muttered to himself under his breath as he saw one of the twins running up to Baekhyun and calling him “appa” too.

The next thing Kyungsoo knew, Baekhyun was carrying one of the twins and walking up to Kyungsoo to kiss him on the cheek.

“I wanted to let you sleep in today because I prepared a special breakfast for us,” Baekhyun happily announced.

Kyungsoo flinched when Baekhyun kissed him and raised a hand to touch his cheek, then realizing that he had a wedding band on his hand just like Baekhyun did.

“B-but I thought you were straight. Why are we married?” Kyungsoo gasped.

“You’re funny,” Baekhyun snickered, thinking that Kyungsoo was playing a joke on him.

Kyungsoo then confirmed that he really was in a different timeline, separate from the other two he had experienced.

Was he really doomed to end up in different times to live as a different version of himself, never to make it past January 18th, 2030? How was he going to finally break this seemingly never-ending cycle? What is it that he had to do? 

Kyungsoo C of L.


	13. for 19th January 2030 (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't the final chapter and I do apologize for that. The final chapter got too long and I had to break it into two parts because I'm not fond of posting single chapters exceeding 10k in words. I will be posting the final chapter in one go regardless of how long it gets though so I can promise that the next chapter will indeed be the last.

For the entirety of the first day Kyungsoo woke up in another iteration of himself, which he henceforth categorized as Kyungsoo C, he was more confused by the fact as to how he ended up marrying Baekhyun instead of how he had been pushed into this different timeline and lost his entire life as Kyungsoo B.

From digging up past photos on Kyungsoo C’s phone, files on the computer, social media posts and documents in the drawer in the apartment, Kyungsoo somehow managed to patch up what he didn’t know yet of this version of himself.

Kyungsoo found birth certificates in the documents folder for the twins. They were born on March 21st, 2019 which put them at four years old in the present day and were only three minutes apart. In contrast, Kyungsoo A’s twins were born in 2018 and Kyungsoo B’s twins were born in 2022.

The older twin was named Byun Taejong and the younger twin, Byun Sejong. Seeing that they were named after a historical father and son pair, Kyungsoo could somehow figure out that the names were his idea too in this timeline.

Baekhyun’s name was also on the birth certificate as well as Kyungsoo’s, so there was no doubt that the twins were his children with Baekhyun. Kyungsoo still had a hard time believing that though.

Initially, Kyungsoo thought that the twins were Chanyeol’s and he had somehow married Baekhyun instead, who then took on the role of their stepfather. That was not the case, however.

A wedding registration certificate Kyungsoo found also put his wedding date with Baekhyun in October 2018, which highly suggested that he and Baekhyun had indeed gotten a shotgun wedding.

Kyungsoo’s own certificates proved that he had graduated with his master’s degree in the fall of 2018, around the time he got married and while he would still be in probably the early 2nd trimester of his pregnancy.

Kyungsoo C had graduated at the same time as Kyungsoo B but still different from Kyungsoo A.

It was definitely a foreign feeling for Kyungsoo. The twins were fraternal but at this age, where their prominent and distinct features had not yet set in, Kyungsoo couldn’t even tell his children apart. He barely even knew them and it was safe to say that Kyungsoo could not find it himself to feel anything for these two children he supposedly had given birth to.

Kyungsoo didn’t even understand how he could be married to Baekhyun. They hadn’t seen each other in almost a year in the last timeline Kyungsoo had been in and here he was married to Baekhyun.

Furthermore, Kyungsoo always assumed that Baekhyun was straight. Even though Baekhyun never really openly defined his orientation, he had always expressed how he was attracted to women and how he had only exclusively dated the opposite gender too.

This was even more confusing than anything Kyungsoo ever dealt with. At least when Kyungsoo woke up in the year 2016 as Kyungsoo B, he didn’t miss out on anything because the life of Kyungsoo B prior to his arrival had been exactly the same as to what he experienced in Kyungsoo B.

Kyungsoo felt that he had lost almost seven years of his life due to the lapse of memories he had from where he assumed Kyungsoo C’s life started to diverge from that of Kyungsoo A and B.

From past experience, Kyungsoo knew that there was no way for him to return to the time of Kyungsoo A or even Kyungsoo B now.

He was forced to accept the reality that he had to live this life now, even if he barely knew himself as a person here. If this life felt strange, Kyungsoo felt even stranger about his own existence.

Above it all, why was this happening to him? For what reason?

But despite it all, Kyungsoo knew how important it was for him to have a semblance of a normal and functioning life even if he had been unwillingly transported to another time to live out as another version of himself.

He had learned from his experiences of living two different- and now three- lives that he needed to live as normally as possible even if everything he had painfully worked for would all be gone come another January 18th, 2030.

Kyungsoo couldn’t tell yet if the life Kyungsoo C had would be worse or perhaps even better. The uncertainty gave him hope but at the same time also plagued his worries.

On that Friday when Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo C, he managed to find out most of the important details of his life after Baekhyun had gone off to work and Kyungsoo was left with the twins.

Here, Baekhyun worked as a marketing consultant in a large multimedia company. It was a different company than the one Baekhyun worked at in the timeline of Kyungsoo A and B. If anything, Kyungsoo thought that Baekhyun’s marriage to him and the twins were certainly a factor as to why he had a different job.

As for Kyungsoo, he found out that Kyungsoo C was in the final stages of his doctoral research. His thesis was basically almost complete, awaiting peer reviews and ready for the thesis defense in the coming months.

Starting that year, Kyungsoo C no longer taught classes as a tutor in the university so he could focus fully on his research and take care of his children at home while Baekhyun worked.

If everything went along with the plan, Kyungsoo was supposed to earn his P.h.D in the fall of the same year.

And as a rather pleasant surprise, Kyungsoo found out his father was indeed still alive in this timeline. Kyungsoo only found out when he received a text in the afternoon from his father asking why he was late at sending the twins to him that day.

Apparently, Choongsun was supposed to be babysitting them that afternoon. Kyungsoo had just naturally assumed his father would not be alive past the year 2022.

After receiving the text, Kyungsoo stumbled around the unfamiliar apartment to look for his children’s bag of items they would need at their grandfather’s place. It was a hassle indeed because Kyungsoo knew next to nothing about this life he led now, at least everything from 2016 onwards.

Kyungsoo C had already earned his driver’s license again about two years ago. He also had a car which Choongsun helped to buy for him too.

With this car, Kyungsoo drove to his father’s house which was right where it was in all the timelines.

And before the kids could even squeal in happiness to realize they were at their grandfather’s house, Kyungsoo had rushed out of the car and hugged his father tight, leaving his children in their child car seats.

His father was very much real and alive here, looking rather healthy and fit too. Choongsun laughed a bit at first to see how clingy Kyungsoo appeared to be that day, obviously unaware that Kyungsoo had lived to see his father die twice.

For a moment, Kyungsoo thought that he would be fine living this life if it meant his father was alive and healthy. But he knew that even bargaining was a privilege he did not possess.

Then he started to wonder what happened to the Chanyeol of this timeline. If Kyungsoo never married Chanyeol and never had children, what was the life he led now?

Surely, the Kyungsoo C of yesterday would have known but not now when he was basically the amalgamation of Kyungsoo A and B in the body of Kyungsoo C.

In order to find the answers, after dropping his children with his father, Kyungsoo went to the one place he had in common with Chanyeol- their university. He had no clue of how Kyungsoo C’s relationship with Chanyeol was and thought it was better to play it safe by seeing each other in person, mainly to see how Chanyeol would react.

Kyungsoo considered himself lucky that Kyungsoo C had a scheduler app on his phone, which Kyungsoo was able to use to track the important dates he had no knowledge of.

That Friday, the schedule only mentioned that Kyungsoo was to come into the graduate student office to finish up on some papers. At least Kyungsoo had the weekend to do some catching up with what Kyungsoo C left behind for him.

When Kyungsoo arrived after lunch hour, the campus was rather quiet and empty, which was usual on a Friday afternoon as most classes were held early in the week and leaving Fridays rather relaxed for the students’ schedule.

Kyungsoo waited for a bit in his car in the university parking lot to think things through. For him, he was just married to Chanyeol yesterday but here he had no idea what was going on.

If according to the timelines of Kyungsoo A and B, Chanyeol should have graduated with his P.h.D by now and had begun teaching undergraduate classes as well as acting in supervisory roles for master's degree students.

Therefore, it made no sense for Kyungsoo to go and find Chanyeol at the graduate student office because Chanyeol would have his own office together with his fellow faculty staff.

So instead, Kyungsoo made the turn towards the Law faculty floor to search for Chanyeol’s office. Even if was in a different place here, the name plaques on each door could easily guide Kyungsoo there.

Kyungsoo did eventually find Chanyeol’s office, which he shared with two other people, only to find it empty but not locked up.

From peaking through the window, Kyungsoo could tell which desk was Chanyeol’s. It wasn’t that hard for him to tell considering that he had married two versions of Chanyeol now.

Judging by the mug on Chanyeol’s desk and his coat still hanging on the back of his chair, Kyungsoo deduced that Chanyeol was probably still on campus somewhere.

Quickly, Kyungsoo began combing the entire law faculty by peaking into the classrooms and lecture halls for Chanyeol’s whereabouts. This place was almost like his second faculty due to how often he came around here to look for Chanyeol.

At this time of the day on a Friday, only a few classes were still going on but Kyungsoo did end up finding Chanyeol in the moot court hall. Where Chanyeol was sitting close upfront with a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other, observing while his students were practicing arguments and presenting their points.

The moot court hall was almost half full of other students who had come as the audience. Therefore, Kyungsoo was able to quietly slip in and take a seat towards the back of the hall, blending in with the other students.

Kyungsoo stayed for almost two hours, observing Chanyeol and not really understanding most of the laws or codes the students seems to talk about. This was clearly not Kyungsoo’s forte and probably wouldn’t ever be, no matter how many universes he ended up waking up in.

In the almost two hours, Kyungsoo also wondered about a few things. He wondered how Chanyeol lived now and particularly if Chanyeol did end up marrying someone else like him? Kyungsoo couldn’t really tell yet because a quick search on social media showed that Chanyeol hadn’t been active for years, providing no updates.

Once the moot court class was over, the audience students packed up and left almost immediately while those who had been participating in the moot court stayed a bit behind to talk among themselves and review their performance with Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo took this as a cue to leave the class too and wait outside, leaning against a wall as he waited for Chanyeol to leave.

Chanyeol was the last to leave the class, needing to lock up the hall on his way out. By then, even the last few students had left, leaving mainly just Chanyeol and Kyungsoo in the corridor outside.

“Umm…hey, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo said to grab Chanyeol’s attention.

“Oh, hi?” Chanyeol turned around to see who had been calling for him while he was locking up the doors outside with his ID card. A stack of papers and his clipboard was also in hand.

Kyungsoo smiled a bit, trying to ease any potential awkwardness as he was unsure how Chanyeol viewed him in this universe.

Chanyeol’s expression remained neutral, neither angry nor happy to see Kyungsoo there.

While, on the other hand, Kyungsoo was just glad to see his husband again- still not finding it in himself to acknowledge Baekhyun as his husband just yet. Seeing a younger version of Chanyeol again was mesmerizing for Kyungsoo because he found all the more reasons to yet fall in love again with another Chanyeol all over again.

“What do you want, Kyungsoo?” Chanyeol replied, sighing before looking at Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo froze. He only realized now that he didn’t actually have anything in particular to tell Chanyeol. There was no way he could talk about them being married in two different universes. If it didn’t play out well then, it probably wasn’t going to be good here too.

Unaware of the dynamics of their relationship here, Kyungsoo really had no idea what to say to Chanyeol. But yet, Kyungsoo knew that he only wanted one thing and that was Chanyeol- even when he didn’t know the rights words or actions to keep the said Chanyeol with him.

“I-I just wanted to say hi. I wanted to know if you’re doing well and everything…yeah,” Kyungsoo stuttered a little, making up an excuse on the spot as he tried to play it off cool, not wishing to repeat any past mistakes.

“Ah,” Chanyeol nodded a bit, seemingly understanding the situation albeit slightly, “I am fine, thank you for asking. Why the sudden need to come out here and see me though? It made me think that you needed something from me.”

“Oh, I just…umm…it’s nothing. I kind of missed you, I can say,” Kyungsoo was bold enough to admit, “So I thought that I wanted to see how you were doing and everything.”

“Right,” Chanyeol’s tone suggested that he was a bit more skeptical now. He had turned his gaze away from Kyungsoo, already ready to leave but not knowing how to exit the said situation.

Kyungsoo laughed awkwardly, trying to keep Chanyeol there but failing at it because Chanyeol excused himself off shortly later.

Kyungsoo stayed on campus for a while after that in an attempt to collect his papers and any information he could use to retrace the steps of Kyungsoo C to fill in the lapse of memories from the year 2016 and onwards.

In the evening, Kyungsoo left the university and went to pick up his children from his father. Only when Choongsun mentioned it did Kyungsoo learn that the twins were actually already enrolled in a pre-school. But that Baekhyun had allowed them to take that day off for some reason.

Kyungsoo then realized that Baekhyun would certainly have different parenting styles than Chanyeol and he groaned at the thought of having to experience that for the first time now. Kyungsoo had no idea how his best friend was as a parent.

Kyungsoo spent most of the weekend figuring out how to approach Baekhyun with the subject of how they even ended up together in the first place. Kyungsoo had no clue how to approach a man he had supposedly been married to for over five years with that subject. From Baekhyun's perspective, it would be strange and questionable. 

If anything, trying to get to know two four-year-olds was way easier as they were already very familiar with Kyungsoo even if not vice versa.

Somehow, Kyungsoo was slightly grateful that he didn’t end up being married who was a complete stranger to him. Baekhyun was not Chanyeol but certainly better than anyone else Kyungsoo could think of.

Through some independent digging of his own, Kyungsoo managed to find out that Chanyeol was still single and was not known to be dating anyone. Which came as an odd sense of relief to Kyungsoo, even if he felt guilty when remembering that he was married to Baekhyun here.

Kyungsoo felt as if he was cheating on Chanyeol, even if it wasn’t because it didn’t seem as if he and Chanyeol were ever even together in the first place.

Trying to figure out who he was as a person as Kyungsoo C was one thing. Avoiding Baekhyun’s advances was another thing.

Kyungsoo couldn’t really blame Baekhyun for just trying to be a normal loving husband, even if the so-called husband Baekhyun married was a different person now. If anything, Kyungsoo actually felt bad for Baekhyun.

When he saw Baekhyun coming in for a kiss, Kyungsoo would turn away and pretend to be distracted by something else, most of the time making up an excuse to check on the children.

Then, Kyungsoo would either stay up and wait for Baekhyun to fall asleep first or go to bed way earlier and pretend to be asleep just so he could avoid Baekhyun in bed.

Kyungsoo didn’t want to be faced with the situation where Baekhyun would try to initiate sex between them because they were married and it was what they should normally do because Kyungsoo would have to turn him down.

Kyungsoo felt bad enough to feel like an imposter in this whole setup. Disappointing and hurting his best friend- now husband- was an even worse hypothetical feeling, Kyungsoo believed.

The whole thing was just odd but Kyungsoo could not avoid Baekhyun forever, especially when they were married with children and lived in the same apartment.

On the second weekend, since Kyungsoo ended up in this timeline, he found himself awake very early even before the crack of dawn on a Sunday because he had gone to bed early in a bid to avoid Baekhyun.

Upon waking up, Kyungsoo quietly crept out of bed so as to not wake Baekhyun up. He then made his way to the twins’ room to check up on them.

Even if two weeks was not enough time for him to form a bond with Taejong and Sejong, Kyungsoo still found it his responsibility to at least make sure they were taken care of, even if it felt as if he was babysitting other people’s children instead of caring for his own. After all, he was in the same body who had conceived and given birth to them.

It wasn’t fair for Kyungsoo but neither was it fair for Baekhyun or the children.

The twins were asleep of course at four something in the morning. After checking up on them, Kyungsoo went to the living room and slumped himself down on the couch with a deep sigh.

It was still dark and the lights were still on in the living room but it was quiet and Kyungsoo was rather grateful for that.

Kyungsoo just needed that brief moment of peace and quiet where he wasn’t actively trying to avoid Baekhyun, busy watching over two playful toddlers and trying to graduate with his P.h.D for the third time now.

He still felt lost in this new world- even if it was technically old to him.

It really hadn’t sunk in yet to Kyungsoo that he probably now had to redo this life all over with different circumstances all beyond his control.

Kyungsoo just missed his two past lives, which were now lost even further from him.

Holding back tears, Kyungsoo curled up on the couch and hugged himself, alone in the living room. Thinking that he could maybe go to sleep or just start preparing to make breakfast early for his family.

All he could do was pick himself up and move on, despite how unwilling he was. He didn’t want it to be like this. He wanted to be back at home with Chanyeol and Minjung and Minhyun.

He had a hard time accepting that he was Kyungsoo C. It was him yet also not him.

Kyungsoo fell asleep again like that on the couch. He probably slept for about an hour or two before being awoken by the sounds of someone moving around the apartment. It was also brighter now that the sun was rising.

Kyungsoo awoke to Baekhyun approaching him and sitting on the empty space on the couch.

“Good morning,” Baekhyun greeted, placing a gentle hand on Kyungsoo’s side, “I took the sausages out from the fridge to defrost. I was planning to make that for breakfast when the kids wake up since they like it.”

“Oh…yeah good morning,” Kyungsoo stirred awake, moving into a sitting position which shook Baekhyun’s hand off of him.

“Did you sleep outside here long?” Baekhyun asked, “I’m sorry if it was too hot in the bed with me last night.”

“It’s fine,” Kyungsoo assured, not wanting to make Baekhyun feel bad, “I’ve only been here a while anyway. Summer is coming so it’s normal that it gets hot at night. It’s not your fault.”

“I see,” Baekhyun smiled, his eyes leveled to Kyungsoo while they were sat on the couch. Baekhyun then moved his hand to caress Kyungsoo’s cheek with the back of his. In a soft voice, Baekhyun spoke lowly, “How are you, Kyungsoo? You’ve been quiet these past few days. Is everything alright? Is something wrong? You know you can tell me.”

Kyungsoo almost gasped when Baekhyun brought up what was already obvious. Kyungsoo was used to telling Baekhyun a lot of things and probably even more now that they were married. Of course, Baekhyun would find it odd that Kyungsoo was suddenly not telling him anything and even avoiding him.

“I…no. Everything’s fine, really.” Kyungsoo shook his head, feeling cornered and scared for some reason but unable to break off his gaze and eye contact from Baekhyun.

“Okay then. I trust you, Soo,” Baekhyun mentioned calmly, lowering his gaze and running his finger along the collar line of Kyungsoo’s pajama shirt, “I was worried, you know.”

Kyungsoo couldn’t say anything but he didn’t want to move from there either, realizing he still had no idea how Baekhyun was as a husband. He felt even worse to see how Baekhyun almost looked as if Kyungsoo had just rejected him. There was just something melancholy in Baekhyun’s expression, especially his eyes.

Kyungsoo could only hug his best friend- husband here- for consolation. Which Kyungsoo did, hugging Baekhyun by the waist tight and burying his face in the latter’s shoulders.

In some ways, Kyungsoo was glad to be with his best friend again after not getting to see each other for a long time in both the futures he had experienced.

Baekhyun smiled and hugged Kyungsoo back, leaning his head on Kyungsoo’s shoulders.

“I love you, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun said, smiling to himself.

“Yeah, I love you too,” Kyungsoo almost forced himself to say maybe just to be courteous.

That same Sunday, Kyungsoo found the wedding album of him and Baekhyun. It was in a storage box placed under their bed which Kyungsoo had somehow missed before.

From the pictures, it appeared to be a small scale wedding in some sort of hotel function room which Kyungsoo didn’t quite recognize. Chanyeol was in some of the pictures, apparently invited to the wedding almost five years ago.

It didn’t seem that Chanyeol hated him in this universe for Jongdae’s death but it didn’t seem as if they were the best of friends either.

While flicking through the album, a loose picture came flying out of the binding. Kyungsoo picked it up and found out that it was a picture of just the three of them; Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol.

Right there and then, Kyungsoo abandoned his idea of slowly asking Baekhyun to find out how they even got married in the first place.

Because Chanyeol’s face on the picture was marked out with a big “X” with a black marker pen. Kyungsoo may have not remembered the past seven years of Kyungsoo C’s life but he was sure Baekhyun was the one who did this and certainly not Kyungsoo C himself.

Kyungsoo hated himself for not knowing what was up when he clearly should have.

**

Kyungsoo was distracted with trying to complete his P.h.D yet again over the next few months for him to be worried about his current life.

While in the process of presenting and defending his thesis, Kyungsoo’s father and Baekhyun’s parents took turns to take care of the twins so Kyungsoo could focus on his studies and Baekhyun wasn’t too overburdened with caring for them and his job.

But for someone who had done this same thing three times now, every time seemed easier and less of an effort for Kyungsoo. He barely felt burdened or stressed out by it. If anything, he was just using it as a further excuse to avoid the life of Kyungsoo C he was still unable to accept. Even if he somehow coerced himself into getting used to kissing and sleeping with Baekhyun instead of Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo completed his P.h.D by successfully defending his thesis research in the summer and attended a graduation ceremony in the fall just for the sake of those around him. At this point, he was getting sick of graduating already.

Beginning that year’s fall semester, Kyungsoo had already begun teaching as an assistant professor. Strangely enough, despite being in different faculties, Kyungsoo often found himself running into Chanyeol around campus be it at the cafeteria, staff lounge or even in the library while looking up a specific book or journal.

Their interactions were usually short and filled with only light small talk. Simple “How are you?”s and “What have you been up to?” were usually exchanged. Chanyeol asked about Baekhyun and the twins while Kyungsoo asked about Chanyeol’s family.

For Kyungsoo, this was probably as close as he could get to be around the only man he ever regarded as his husband.

Then in late October, some two months into the fall semester, Kyungsoo ran into Chanyeol again in a classroom corridor after they were done teaching their last class of the day, just two doors away from each other.

Chanyeol took one look at his watch and promptly asked Kyungsoo if he wanted to grab something to eat outside. Kyungsoo, of course, said yes.

Chanyeol drove Kyungsoo to a steakhouse that late afternoon, just as the steakhouse was opening for dinner. It was the same one Chanyeol used to bring Kyungsoo to as both Kyungsoo A and B.

Kyungsoo smiled to himself, knowing Chanyeol’s tastes never changed either.

It was about three quarters past six in the evening but Chanyeol was already eating a medium-rare steak accompanied by a glass of red wine.

Kyungsoo ordered a basket of chicken nuggets and fries instead with a soft drink. He didn’t want to be too full and miss out on having dinner with the family when he got home later.

Seeing this actually prompted Chanyeol to ask, “Don’t you want any red wine? Did you really quit drinking?”

“Ah yes, definitely,” Kyungsoo agreed, cringing at the past memories of his alcohol consumption behaviors from the past two lives, “I have children now and I’d like to be healthy and around for them.”

“That’s fair enough,” Chanyeol nodded, holding up a fork as he proceeded to cut more pieces of his steak, “You know, I’ve been meaning to catch up with you. Now that you have your P.h.D and don’t seem too busy, I asked you out today.”

“I see,” Kyungsoo smiled a bit, dipping a fry in the sauce bowl, “Thank you for spending time with me.”

“Yeah, we haven’t had the opportunity to just hang out with each other since our undergraduate days,” Chanyeol stated, putting his fork and knife down and simply stared at the tablecloth, “You know, I sort of missed those days, really.”

Kyungsoo gulped a lump in his throat, sensing that the conversation was about to take a heavy turn.

“Ah yeah, me too,” Kyungsoo agreed with Chanyeol, beginning to feel anxious.

“When you went all the way to my class and waited outside there for me a few months ago, truth be told, I actually felt touched,” Chanyeol confessed, now looking up and across the table at Kyungsoo, “You know I don’t have many friends or people to talk to outside of work. I really appreciated that and you agreeing to come out with me today. Thank you, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol then smiled.

Kyungsoo smiled too, laughing a little to play off his nervousness and how hard his heart clenched to hear such a thing from the man he always loved in the previous world, this and maybe even the next.

That evening, Kyungsoo still got home a bit later than usual. When Baekhyun asked where Kyungsoo had been, he didn’t lie and said he was with Chanyeol before the twins got his attention by asking Kyungsoo to look at an art project they made at school that day.

Which was why Kyungsoo didn’t see how shocked Baekhyun looked to hear that statement.

Not a week later, Chanyeol came looking for Kyungsoo on campus again and pulled him aside to ask if he was alright.

Chanyeol looked absolutely concerned and maybe even slightly exasperated. He kept asking if Kyungsoo and the twins were alright and if they were in need of somewhere else to go.

Kyungsoo was confused and felt in the dark until Chanyeol revealed that Baekhyun had come onto campus and cornered Chanyeol in the parking lot. Where Baekhyun yelled at Chanyeol for the dinner they had together the other day.

Baekhyun had warned Chanyeol to not approach Kyungsoo again, which sparked concern on Chanyeol’s behalf on Kyungsoo’s situation.

Kyungsoo didn’t really understand what was going on until a dream he had one night that basically revealed how he had ended up married to Baekhyun in the first place.

Apparently, Kyungsoo C had too fallen in love with Chanyeol and made the moves to confess only to get rejected. A broken-hearted Kyungsoo C then sought the company of Baekhyun to soothe his pain, where one thing led to another and a physical relationship began with the two of them.

Which resulted in Kyungsoo getting pregnant by accident and having to marry Baekhyun shotgun.

When Kyungsoo woke up, he finally understood all those dreams that the Chanyeol in Kyungsoo B’s timeline had mentioned about. Was it fragments of a life he didn’t remember like this too?

Only now Kyungsoo finally understood how it was able to sway Chanyeol’s mind, whatnot with the way it all felt realistic and convincing.

Since that day Chanyeol came to Kyungsoo all worried and asking if he needed help did Kyungsoo finally learn what kind of husband Baekhyun was. And why Baekhyun never had a stable relationship in both of the previous timelines.

Baekhyun got easily jealous and borderline possessive. He was constantly needing to know where Kyungsoo, what he was doing and who he was talking to. Kyungsoo hated how rough Baekhyun was with him when they made love, always wanting to leave very obvious hickeys that Kyungsoo had to physically fight off.

One night, Kyungsoo caught Baekhyun reading through the texts on his phone and even deleting Chanyeol off from the contacts list.

But still, Kyungsoo tried to justify Baekhyun’s behavior. He wasn’t able to accept that while Baekhyun was a rather good friend and parent, he wasn’t actually a good husband.

Baekhyun was his husband here and despite his behavior, he actually did love Kyungsoo. There was no guarantee that Kyungsoo would be able to find someone else if he left Baekhyun, Kyungsoo believed.

Kyungsoo blamed it on himself. Baekhyun obviously knew how Kyungsoo was in love with Chanyeol and had basically gotten pregnant and settled down with the rebound that was him.

It was his fault for making Baekhyun jealous, Kyungsoo believed. That all of this wasn’t fair for Baekhyun.

Baekhyun was still his very good friend and Kyungsoo didn’t want to tear apart this family. He didn’t want to ruin this life of his. That was until Baekhyun’s birthday in May of 2024, almost exactly a year since Kyungsoo ended up as Kyungsoo C.

Since it was Baekhyun’s birthday, Kyungsoo had wanted to make it special for his husband. The children were off at their grandparents and Kyungsoo had booked a hotel room for them to spend the night in.

After dinner, they went up to their room and Baekhyun quickly led Kyungsoo to the bed where they made love.

But later in the night, while Baekhyun was asleep, Kyungsoo woke up to use the toilet. Along the way, he picked up their clothes scattered on the floor.

While Kyungsoo was fluffing out Baekhyun’s suit jacket to hang up, a small thumbtack and the roll of condoms fell out of the pocket.

Kyungsoo was curious at first until he found out that were rather small but visible holes upon closer inspection on the condom wrapper.

In a rush, Kyungsoo dashed to the washroom and rummaged through the trash can, almost in tears, as he sifted through trash for the used condom.

Kyungsoo’s heart dropped to his stomach when he found the used condom leaking with holes in it. It was as he feared. He was strict on not planning for any more children but it didn’t seem Baekhyun respected that decision. 

Just as he realized it, Kyungsoo then remembered more of the seven years of Kyungsoo C he didn’t previously know about. Around the time he started a physical relationship with Baekhyun after getting rejected by Chanyeol, Kyungsoo always insisted on taking contraceptive pills but Baekhyun would convince him that he didn’t need it because they had used a condom.

And at the time, Kyungsoo didn’t know better and actually found it endearing to feel wanted by someone so badly, up to a point that they were willing to get him pregnant just so they could be together.

Feeling betrayed, scared and disgusted, Kyungsoo filed for divorce in the summer of the same year. Kyungsoo made sure he already had a different place to stay with the children before doing so.

Baekhyun was, of course, angry upon learning Kyungsoo wanted a divorce.

During such a turbulent time, Kyungsoo turned a lot to Chanyeol who with his P.h.D in Law did know a thing or two to help Kyungsoo in such a time, even if family law wasn’t his exact specialty.

Chanyeol was a big help and relief to Kyungsoo during the divorce process. Kyungsoo had never been divorced before. He was experiencing all of this for the first time and it was indeed stressful.

Often times when Kyungsoo had classes to teach and nobody to care for the twins, Chanyeol offered to watch over them and let the boys play in his office. Chanyeol would also babysit the twins and bring them out to amusement parks or the movies while their parents were in heated divorce mediation meetings.

Kyungsoo still did love Baekhyun but not in the way Baekhyun loved him. It pained Kyungsoo to have to divorce Baekhyun but they were only good as friends and maybe the distance between them as they grew older was there for a reason.

The divorce was only finalized in the fall of the next year in 2025, just a few days after their 7th wedding anniversary. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo agreed to shared custody over their children.

Baekhyun moved back in with his parents and Kyungsoo continued living in their old apartment.

On the evening of the day their divorce was finalized, Kyungsoo was reluctant to come home to an empty apartment. The children were at Baekhyun’s that week.

Even if Kyungsoo didn’t want to live this life, it still did impact him very hard. He felt that he had failed. The divorce was a loss to him too.

That evening, Kyungsoo spent a good amount of time crying in his car before going up to the floor of his apartment unit. Where he found Chanyeol sitting outside on the floor, with his back leaning on the door. Chanyeol had obviously been waiting for a while. 

“Hey, I tried to call but you didn’t answer. Did you see my texts?” Chanyeol asked, standing up.

“I’m sorry, no. I had my phone on silent. I didn’t really want to look it,” Kyungsoo informed, wiping his tears with the sleeve of his coat, “Did you need anything?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol nodded, leaning against the wall so Kyungsoo could unlock the door “I came to check up on you since you told me that your divorce is finalized today. I know it’s a hard time for you and besides, Baekhyun told me to make sure you were alright too.”

“Huh, Baekhyun did?” Kyungsoo looked up at Chanyeol, sniffling a bit.

“Well, I still would have come even if he didn’t ask me to. I thought you could use some company at a time like this,” Chanyeol expressed, waiting to be invited inside.

Kyungsoo chuckled dryly at the irony of the situation. He and Baekhyun were obviously just better off as friends, after all.

Shortly later, Kyungsoo invited Chanyeol into his apartment and later into his personal life- yet again.

Although they became close, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol didn’t officially date until a year later once it was clear that Kyungsoo was no longer on a rebound again.

Kyungsoo’s father passed away in 2027 but Kyungsoo was more prepared for it this time around.

He and Chanyeol finally got engaged in 2029 after dating for three years this time, the longest they had ever dated before getting married. Their wedding was set for in late 2030, giving them ample time to prepare but also leaving Kyungsoo with anxiety that he might never get to see it.

The scroll never reached Kyungsoo because he never sent it to himself, in hopes that it would arrive by itself like in the time of Kyungsoo A.

On the night of January 18th, 2030, Kyungsoo attempted to stay up by napping during the day, drinking lots of coffee and moving around the house while his fiance Chanyeol slept soundly.

But yet, Kyungsoo still failed by passing out after midnight. For whoever or whatever that was causing this to him made sure Kyungsoo would never get to see the next day until he figured out and fixed whatever it was that caused all this.

This time, Kyungsoo woke up in his father’s house which had been remodeled and looked quite different than any of the versions Kyungsoo had seen.

Here, Kyungsoo never married anyone and never had children. Both he and Chanyeol remained single.

The date was December 3rd, 2029.

Kyungsoo gasped in horror to find out that he just had over a month now until the day he would “die” again and wake up in a different universe. Every different version of him always seemed worse than the next. 

Kyungsoo D of L.


	14. for 19th January 2030 (part 2)

In whatever time Kyungsoo had left as Kyungsoo D, he managed to quickly figure out where his current persona was at in life. Due to the limited amount of time he had before January 19th, 2030, Kyungsoo had to rush and had no time to wait around and see what would happen; just like he had attempted to do in other previous timelines.

Here, he was a university professor like he always was. His father had passed away some five years ago from a heart attack as expected.

The stark difference is that he remained single without children and so did Chanyeol. It didn’t seem as if both of them had been in a recent relationship with other people either. Because Kyungsoo never married, he never moved out of his father’s house and continued living there even now in his late 30s.

Here, Baekhyun had also not moved overseas for his job and continued to work in the city. Apparently, he and Baekhyun were still in frequent contact with each other too.

Baekhyun was definitely not married to Kyungsoo, but Kyungsoo still found it hard to tell if his best friend ever had any romantic inclinations towards him.

A change compared to previous timelines Kyungsoo had traversed in was that Baekhyun had somehow managed to stay in a relationship with a woman albeit tumultuous. Kyungsoo still wasn’t sure what Baekhyun’s sexual orientation was and at this point, Kyungsoo didn’t have the capacity to care too much about that.

Baekhyun being occupied with someone else was one less worry for Kyungsoo after what he experienced as Kyungsoo C.

On top of that, Kyungsoo’s relationship with Chanyeol was just okay. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t bad either.

It appeared that they didn’t have much, if any, sort of reconciliation after Jongdae’s death. But because they still had to see each other on an occasional basis due to working at the same place, they were at least civil with each other.

Kyungsoo knew this because when he ran into Chanyeol on campus, Chanyeol would just nod and smile a little at him before going on his way. But he would never smile as if when seeing a friend and he wouldn’t stop to talk to Kyungsoo, even if to make small talk.

Which wasn’t surprising at all. At this point, it would take a lot to surprise Kyungsoo.

It was still better than having Chanyeol absolutely hate Kyungsoo’s guts, however. Maybe the time that had passed since then had helped Chanyeol heal and mature.

But still, from what Kyungsoo had experienced, this was still very upsetting and disappointing for him. But no amount of self-loathing for Kyungsoo D’s past actions in not reconciling their relationship could make up for it.

When Kyungsoo arrived in the timeline of Kyungsoo D, the fall semester was coming to an end and final examinations had already begun and would be taking place right until just before Christmas.

Due to such, Kyungsoo didn’t have classes to teach but he still needed to be readily available on campus until the last of his students had sat for their paper which he taught.

Kyungsoo was in a lot of stress. He had just a bit over a month left in this life before January 18. On top of his obligations to his work and students, there was not enough time to get used to this life, least to try and turn things around.

There was no way Chanyeol was going to fall in love with him in one month and it was way too late to even have children now, no matter who was going to be the one impregnating him.

Kyungsoo didn’t even know why he wanted to keep trying when it was clear that he would lose eventually and all of this would come to a waste. Maybe it was because Kyungsoo disliked the idea of just letting things happen to him when he had the ability to control some aspects of it, maybe it was because Kyungsoo hoped that all of this would end one day and that he would actually make it to a version of him where he got to see January 19th, 2030.

For in his dreams, he still saw a world where he was happily married to Chanyeol with their two children Minjung and Minhyun.

The last paper Kyungsoo’s students took was on the 2nd last day of that term’s final examination period. By then, a majority of the students had finished up all their papers and had gone home for the holidays. A lot of the professors had also gone on leave for the end of the year. They would only return after the New Year’s.

At four in the afternoon on December 20th, 2029, the finals for Kyungsoo’s paper ended. After the examination supervision board had handed over the test papers to Kyungsoo and he confirmed receiving all the papers, Kyungsoo packed up and decided to leave before the snow got any heavier.

The weather forecast app on his phone warned of a blizzard in the evening and since it was already getting dark, Kyungsoo wanted to be safe at home instead of out there.

Even if he was going to disappear from this world in less than a month from now, Kyungsoo still wanted to live as normally as possible.

Kyungsoo didn’t have an umbrella so he trudged through the snow with his laptop bag on his back and exam papers stuffed in it. It was already beginning to snow heavily and the winds were also beginning to pick up.

The moment Kyungsoo got to his black sedan car parked at the university’s parking building, he placed his bag down on the car’s hood and then started shaking snow off of his coat and hair before getting inside.

After putting his bag in the rear seat, Kyungsoo slammed the door shut and moved to open the driver’s side door when he saw Chanyeol walking to his white SUV, parked two spaces away from Kyungsoo.

Because there weren’t many cars there, there was no other car parked in between Kyungsoo and Chanyeol’s. Now that Kyungsoo saw it, he realized that it slipped his mind how Chanyeol always drove the same brand and model of SUV at this time in every version of the timeline Kyungsoo had been in.

Chanyeol didn’t have an umbrella either and he was similarly shaking snow off of himself with a stack of papers under his arm, presumably test papers too.

This was where he suddenly crossed eyes with Kyungsoo was staring at him a bit too eagerly from two parking spaces away.

Kyungsoo didn’t think. He simply acted and began walking the short distance to Chanyeol’s car to stand right in front of the man himself.

Kyungsoo gasped and then had to restrain himself from showing too much emotion. Chanyeol couldn’t have guessed it but Kyungsoo still didn’t want him to somehow find out that the emotions coursing through him were that of a man who had “lost” his husband and fell in love with all over again for several times.

Chanyeol stood there in front of his car, looking a bit confused, with some snow still stuck to his dark hair which was already beginning to gray especially around his hairline. It didn’t really cross Chanyeol’s mind what business Kyungsoo had to do with him since they didn’t really talk much to each other anyway.

Snow continued to fall silently still, despite how heavier it was getting. Both Chanyeol and Kyungsoo could see this from the third floor of the parking garage they were in. The sun was setting but the dark clouds made it seem darker than it really was.

Only the howling of the winds was heard and maybe the pounding of Kyungsoo’s heart now that he was face to face with Chanyeol again. He was close to the love of his life but yet still so far from him.

“H-hey, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo initiated the conversation, trying to appear as cheerful as possible. Even if he was miserable, it was important that other people didn’t know about it.

“Oh, hi,” Chanyeol responded, shifting the stack of papers under his arm and carrying it pressed to his chest instead.

“On your way home, eh? Finals finally over you too?” Kyungsoo stated the obvious in hopes of striking a conversation.

Chanyeol was still a bit too tactful despite such a question and went along with the flow Kyungsoo had started, “Yeah, finally. The last paper for my unit was just now. I’m starting my Christmas break tomorrow and I’ll just be checking these until next year,” Chanyeol said as he shifted the papers in his hold.

“Me too but that’s life for us,” Kyungsoo chuckled, albeit a half-forced one.

“Yeah, I guess,” Chanyeol replied, looking at the ground and then back at Kyungsoo but not directly making eye contact either. He wanted to leave but he didn’t know how to say that he had to go yet. Chanyeol was a confident man but it didn’t stop him from being socially awkward at times too.

“Ah, Christmas. Do you have plans this year?” Kyungsoo asked, hoping to keep this conversation going.

“No, not much. I’ll probably be at my sister’s and parents’ for Christmas to be with them. I’m not celebrating it personally.” Chanyeol quickly mentioned, thinking that Kyungsoo was asking to maybe come over.

“I see,” Kyungsoo nodded, “That sounds a bit like me too. You do get used to being alone after some time but it does get tough at this time of the year, doesn’t it?”

“Well, we humans are social beings by nature so it’s natural for us to crave the company of others even if some of us do prefer the isolation. I thought a history professor like you would know that better,” Chanyeol chuckled, actually finding it somewhat amusing.

“That’s sociology, Chanyeol. Not history,” Kyungsoo corrected, smiling more genuinely this time as he somehow found it comical too.

“But yeah it does get lonelier as we get older,” Chanyeol continued, voicing his opinion, “Most people our age are married or have children already. Even if we have close friends, they’re probably busy with their own families first. I suppose singles like us do feel a bit isolated in that case.”

Slightly frustrated and partially exasperated that he had to deal with another version of Chanyeol that did not love him, and reminded of the little amount of time he had left, Kyungsoo’s voice shook as he desperately spoke.

“Chanyeol, what if I told you that I had lived four different lives, where we became very close to each other and where I loved you and you loved me. We even got married and had two children, twin boys. Would you believe me?” Kyungsoo painfully gasped at the end of his sentence. He was beginning to tremble not from the cold but from his own feelings.

Chanyeol heard that and laughed a bit, covering his mouth partially with the back of his hand when he did so, “Are you trying to be funny? Did you want to see how I’d react to that? Well, that was a good one then.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Kyungsoo pretended to smile too.

If for any consolation, Chanyeol at least did pat Kyungsoo on the back before they went off their separate ways. Chanyeol seemed in a lighter spirit, thinking that Kyungsoo had been making a joke with his statement.

For the rest of the evening, Kyungsoo could feel the weight of Chanyeol’s hand on his back for the rest of the evening, the memory of his touch lingering like a haunted memory.

Alone under running warm water in his shower, Kyungsoo broke down into tears alone as he was pelted by his shower. He wanted Chanyeol to come and comfort him but that wasn’t going to happen. There was no feasible and sane way he’d ever achieve anything he hoped to in less than a month.

For the rest of the short winter break, Kyungsoo spent it marking test papers and reviewing his students’ coursework so he could obtain their final grade for his subject. Kyungsoo wanted to complete it all before January 18th, 2030.

If he was going to disappear from this world and if it was going to carry on without him, he wanted to at least play his part and do as much as he could without troubling anyone.

Kyungsoo also noted how his students were also mostly the same people in the various timelines he had been in, although there were a few new faces and a few who didn’t appear in his classes either. Not that Kyungsoo was sure what to do with this information anyway.

  
And then on Christmas, Kyungsoo received an email of a virtual greeting card from Chanyeol wishing him a “Merry Christmas”. It made Kyungsoo’s heart flutter and it made him smile to receive it but he didn’t think much of it.

Maybe Chanyeol sent it out to everyone on his email list. Kyungsoo wasn’t special for receiving it, he thought. Kyungsoo only replied to the email with a short message of thanks. He didn’t want Chanyeol to know how hung up he still was.

Foremostly, Kyungsoo didn’t want to put too much effort into someone who would never return his feelings, even if a small fraction of it. Because all of this would just come back to hurt him in some way.

Then January came and each day closer to January 18th left Kyungsoo even more exhausted and tired. He was less scared of the day coming more than the thought that he had no idea how the next life of his would be.

Was it going to be as tragic as Kyungsoo B or as confusing as Kyungsoo C or just as defeating as the current Kyungsoo D? Kyungsoo had no way of telling until he was already there.

If for any consolation, his relatively short projected life as Kyungsoo D actually meant he didn’t have much to lose than all the previous iterations of himself.

But the one thing he knew was how true it was when Chanyeol mentioned this time of the year being the loneliest for people like them. This was actually the first time Kyungsoo found himself alone at this time. Usually, he would at least be with Chanyeol if not his children around this time when he’d disappear from this current world.

Now, Kyungsoo knew how difficult it was for him. His own emotions were too crushing and overwhelming for him to even think about how Chanyeol would feel too but he was presumably happier since he still had his sister and parents to be with, unlike Kyungsoo.

Despite that, Kyungsoo still could not find it in himself to answer Baekhyun’s call when the latter asked Kyungsoo out for lunch or for some coffee. It was not because Kyungsoo still had mixed feelings towards Baekhyun due to the events in Kyungsoo C’s time.

It was because Kyungsoo had given up. Meeting Baekhyun was going to be a waste of time and another painful memory for when this was all over.

Kyungsoo returned to work on campus on the first Monday of January, exactly two weeks before January 18th. He was only there to clear up any unfinished work, including revising the syllabus of his subject with the dean and the other professors for the next semester.

Since this Kyungsoo was unmarried and no children to take care of, he found himself spending more time occupied with work and ongoing research he was never going to complete because he never lived past January 18th, 2030.

A week before January 18th, Kyungsoo went to work to find a card on his desk. Kyungsoo’s first thought was that the card had been left by a fellow teaching staff or a student. It was probably a wedding invitation or something like that, Kyungsoo thought.

Instead, Kyungsoo found a card from Chanyeol, inviting him to his family’s large open house celebration for Lunar New Year’s in early February. Kyungsoo was also asked to RSVP for the event.

This time, Kyungsoo knew that maybe Chanyeol had actually put some thought into this invitation because Kyungsoo’s name was clearly written on it, in Chanyeol’s handwriting which was absolutely familiar to him.

Smiling a bit to himself, Kyungsoo replied with a “yes” on the RSVP checkbox and dropped off the card back on Chanyeol’s desk, even when Kyungsoo knew that he would never be able to go because the date was set for February.

Since Chanyeol wasn’t around at the time Kyungsoo dropped by at his desk and the office also being empty, Kyungsoo decided to take a sit down on Chanyeol’s chair.

Chanyeol had also left a coat hanging on the back of his chair. Kyungsoo sighed as he leaned back against the chair, turning his face to the fabric of Chanyeol’s coat.

Kyungsoo wanted to hug Chanyeol’s coat, stuff it in his face and hold it close to his chest but that was wrong and creepy to do it to someone who was only a friend and just that.

Therefore, Kyungsoo refrained himself from doing that, even if made his tears well up that he couldn’t hold Chanyeol at least one last time.

He had chosen to suffer alone and this was just a part of that.

On the night of January 18th, 2030, Kyungsoo laid down in bed alone and looked at a picture of Chanyeol he had found online on his phone.

Chanyeol was smiling in the picture and he looked happy. Kyungsoo’s final wish was for Chanyeol to live happily, even if Kyungsoo didn’t.

Then, exhaustion took over Kyungsoo and he went to sleep rather peacefully, feeling more prepared for whatever life he would be thrust into tomorrow.

Kyungsoo E of L.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo E in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room but this wasn’t surprising to him now at all. This was expected and Kyungsoo just needed to figure out what this life was.

Kyungsoo found his glasses on a dark-colored wooden nightstand so he could take a closer look at what this life had for him. Kyungsoo found a phone too which unlocked through facial recognition but he didn’t bother checking it yet.

The first thing Kyungsoo noticed was how spacious this room was. This was probably the biggest room he had slept in.

Now that Kyungsoo saw it, he realized how big the bed was. All the furniture matched in a similar dark theme too. A set of glass panels on one wall suggested that a similarly spacious bathroom was also behind it.

Heavy curtains covered the window and Kyungsoo was curious enough to pull them apart to look, where he was met with the 2nd-floor sight of a large and well-maintained lawn, even if it appeared to be currently winter.

This was a big and expensive house and Kyungsoo wondered what year it was and what had happened in his life for him to end up here.

Kyungsoo walked down to a mirror above the dresser in the room, with an interactive digital panel on it which told the time, date and weather outside.

The date was January 9th, 2029; just a little more than a year left until January 18th, 2030.

One year was still too little, Kyungsoo thought, but certainly way better than the one month he had as Kyungsoo D.

Kyungsoo left his room, where he was met by a modernly furnished hallway in what was already obviously a big house. At the end of the hallway where it ended and the stairs to the floor below was, Kyungsoo spotted a framed portrait hanging on the wall.

Upon noticing it, Kyungsoo walked up towards it to see the portrait clearer and up close.

Kyungsoo gasped in silence upon seeing the portrait clearly. He wasn’t too shocked but he still didn’t predict this coming either, not that he was ever able to predict the outcome of his alternative lives either.

In the professionally taken portrait were Chanyeol, Kyungsoo and a young girl around late elementary school age. Since it appeared to be a family portrait, Kyungsoo could guess that she was meant to be Kyungsoo E and Chanyeol’s daughter.

Kyungsoo walked around the large house and eventually found the kitchen after some time. Somehow, Kyungsoo didn’t run into anybody on the way there, which he expected due to the size of the house.

It was a bit hard to believe that he, Chanyeol and their supposed daughter lived together in this big house that seemed so devoid of warmth whatnot with all the dark furniture, plain design and how the windows were all heavily curtained to shut off the outside world; unlike the cozy home Kyungsoo lived in with Chanyeol around this time.

Then again, Kyungsoo was probably a whole different person here.

In the kitchen, Kyungsoo saw Chanyeol in his dress shirt and trousers with his hair neatly styled, looking ready for work. It was a Tuesday so Chanyeol should have probably been on campus already since it was already noon.

Chanyeol was on his phone talking to someone regarding some plans and papers when he saw Kyungsoo walk into the kitchen still in his pajamas.

“I’m sorry, I have to go. My husband is awake,” Chanyeol spoke to the other person over the phone once he saw Kyungsoo and quickly hung up the call.

Kyungsoo just stood in silence, somewhere near the massive black marble top counter as Chanyeol approached him. Kyungsoo wasn’t sure what to say or do because he had no idea how Kyungsoo E’s dynamic was with Chanyeol and he didn’t want to throw that off so soon.

He wasn’t so sure yet but Kyungsoo could feel that Kyungsoo E’s life had been quite very different than what Kyungsoo had experienced.

“Good morning, did you sleep well?” Chanyeol said as he wrapped his arms around Kyungsoo’s waist, pulling in Kyungsoo closer to his person as he pressed a kiss to Kyungsoo’s forehead.

“Y-yeah, I did,” Kyungsoo replied, not resisting Chanyeol’s touch since it felt like ages since he was able to be this close with Chanyeol.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” Chanyeol mentioned with Kyungsoo still wrapped in his arms, where he tilted his head down to meet Kyungsoo eyes.

“Aren’t you going to work today?” Kyungsoo asked just to be safe.

“I will. I have to go in to the office later this afternoon. I’m just waiting for Hayoung to come back from school so we can have lunch together. I don’t have much work to do anyway,” Chanyeol informed.

“Ah, sure,” Kyungsoo nodded, safely assuming that this Hayoung was their daughter.

“Why don’t you go shower and change? She’ll be home soon,” Chanyeol suggested, leaning in close with his lips close to Kyungsoo’s ear when he said so.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo easily agreed to as Chanyeol’s grip on him loosened and he was able to turn around and make the long walk back to what was supposed to be his room.

The moment Kyungsoo stripped himself from his pajamas, he saw rather visible scars on his arms and his thighs. The scars were probably a few centimeters in length and seemed old enough to discolor and almost match his own natural skin tone.

This piqued Kyungsoo’s curiosity even further but he’d have to find out later and at the same time figure out how one year left was going to do anything for him.

Kyungsoo spent a good amount of time in the fancy bathtub in the spacious bathroom attached to his room. It was as nice as an expensive hotel’s bathroom and Kyungsoo couldn’t believe that he was living in all this luxury.

Sure, Chanyeol had rich parents and Kyungsoo’s own mother was rather wealthy herself. As college professors, Kyungsoo and Chanyeol led relatively easy upper-middle-class lives too but that was nowhere near the level of Kyungsoo’s current living situation.

It didn’t seem that Chanyeol was a college professor here and Kyungsoo started to question if he was one too because it seemed acceptable for him to be waking up at almost noon too.

After spending a good amount of time in the bath, Kyungsoo dried up and was overwhelmed by the number of clothes that were supposedly his in the walk-in closet which was easily the size of a regular room itself.

Then, Kyungsoo went back down to the kitchen to have lunch with Chanyeol and meet Hayoung for the first time.

When Kyungsoo entered the kitchen, the entire room fell silent when Chanyeol and Hayoung had been conversing with a man whom Kyungsoo didn’t see earlier but was dressed like a housekeeper would.

Kyungsoo would have thought that Hayoung would be excited to see him but instead, she turned back to her plate and continued eating. Chanyeol seemed a bit surprised too but he quickly regained his composure.

“Oh, I didn’t know you would be joining us. I was going to have your meal sent up to your room as usual,” Chanyeol stated, looking over at the housekeeper and then back at Kyungsoo.

“No, it’s fine,” Kyungsoo refused, “I’ll have lunch here with you two. That’s better,” Kyungsoo affirmed, feeling even more lost and confused. What was actually up with Kyungsoo E’s life?

“Alright then,” Chanyeol nodded, gesturing towards the housekeeper to prepare another set of the meal for Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo did have lunch with Chanyeol and Hayoung, their daughter whom Kyungsoo still knew nothing about. She appeared to be around ten to twelve years old and was still wearing the uniform of an expensive private school which Kyungsoo recognized from looking around schools for the twins he fathered in different worlds.

There was no doubt she was Chanyeol’s child because they looked almost the same especially when sitting next to each other. In fact, Kyungsoo now had a hard time believing that Hayoung was his daughter too.

Kyungsoo attempted to make small talk with both Chanyeol and Hayoung, not wanting them to feel anything off with himself- since this was literally the first day in memory he had of this life.

Kyungsoo asked about school to Hayoung since it felt like the most normal thing to say to a girl her age and her responses were short and straightforward, leaving no room to continue on.

Then it seemed to Kyungsoo that how he was acting now wasn’t actually normal.

Although, Chanyeol tried coaxing Hayoung into talking to Kyungsoo, telling her stuff such as, “Why don’t you tell appa about the year-end class party and the holiday outing plans with your classmates?”

Hayoung would continue on with the short sentences before finishing up her lunch and leaving the table to return to her room.

Chanyeol excused himself to go to work shortly after too and left Kyungsoo alone, who didn’t feel like finishing his lunch now. Instead of mentioning going to campus or having a class to teach and students to guide, Chanyeol talked about a “firm” which made Kyungsoo question things even further.

Now that he had some time alone, Kyungsoo attempted to retrace this rather perplexing life of his. At least that was something he knew to do now.

Kyungsoo’s first go to was the documents drawer which he found in a private office in the house, which he presumed belonged to him because the decor didn’t seem like something Chanyeol would have.

As expected, Kyungsoo found important evidence to help him clue parts of this life. A birth certificate for Hayoung showed that she was born in the summer of 2019 when Kyungsoo and Chanyeol would both be twenty-six years old.

A marriage registration for Kyungsoo and Chanyeol indicated that they were married just a few months after Hayoung’s birth. This sequence of events was slightly similar to how Kyungsoo A ended up married to Chanyeol.

A death certificate for Kyungsoo’s father also put his death in the year 2025 for the same reason.

Kyungsoo also found a graduation certificate for himself, stating that he graduated with his master's degree in the fall of 2018. Kyungsoo then continued looking through the cabinet and also found Chanyeol’s bachelor’s and master’s degree certificates but none that certified that they both possessed a P.h.D.

Kyungsoo then went online on a computer and looked up on the internet both his and Chanyeol’s name with their university. Where neither of them was ever listed as part of the university’s teaching staff. No doctoral research papers or citations also existed under their name.

However, Kyungsoo did end up finding Chanyeol’s information and pictures on the website of a popular law firm that boasted on their page to possess a legal team of almost fifty lawyers and paralegals.

In this universe, Chanyeol did not pursue his P.h.D and instead started a law firm with a few of his connections and the help of his lawyer parents and their associates. A quick internet search also showed that the law firm and Chanyeol himself had been employed in high profile cases involving large lawsuits, corrupted politicians and rich businessmen.

Now it seemed to explain their current and wealthy living conditions.

Also, Kyungsoo didn’t seem to be able to find evidence that he had ever been employed past the part-time job he had as a waiter at a family restaurant while he was still studying. It very much appeared that he had just stopped studying once he obtained his master’s before having Hayoung shortly later and then becoming a stay at home parent.

But all that information only covered a small part of the questions Kyungsoo had to uncover the mystery of this life. Kyungsoo was hoping it’d all come to him in a dream, like they had in the previous timelines.

However, even if it all came to worse, he only had a year left and maybe it wasn’t worth pursuing the answers anyway.

For the sake of it, Kyungsoo did look up for Baekhyun and found out that he was living overseas, working in the same job he did like in the timeline of Kyungsoo A & B.

Kyungsoo refrained from trying to make contact with Baekhyun now because it didn’t seem as if it was even worth it.

This life was easy, sure, but Kyungsoo was finding himself with too much time to spare on his hands now that he didn’t have to work and a lot of the housework and child-rearing was done by assistants and housekeepers.

A few weeks later, Hayoung went on winter break from school. Kyungsoo was hoping to spend time with his daughter, thinking that she would be more open to the idea with school out of the way. Since Kyungsoo was a stay at home parent too, he thought that he would have plenty of time to spend with her.

But the same thing continued where Hayoung cooped herself in her room playing games or watching television all day, essentially avoiding Kyungsoo. She had meals sent up to her room too and refused to eat in the kitchen with Kyungsoo too but would come down to eat with Chanyeol occasionally.

In the afternoon Hayoung would sometimes have the driver take her to Chanyeol’s sister’s home, where she would spend time with her aunt and cousin instead. Sometimes, Hayoung would sleepover there for days and that seemed pretty normal too.

Kyungsoo assumed that Hayoung was just going through a phase as it didn’t seem as if there was anything wrong either, not that Kyungsoo would know of, since Chanyeol didn’t seem to bring up anything either.

Still, Kyungsoo wanted to try and get close to his daughter, even if he had no recollection of giving birth and raising her these past ten years.

For the first time since he started living as Kyungsoo E less than a month ago, Kyungsoo decided to cook. In this life, no one in the house ever cooked since there was a chef who came by to prepare meals for them daily.

This wasn’t really a surprise to Kyungsoo either considering their lifestyle.

The Sunday morning where Kyungsoo woke up early, he told the chef to take the breakfast duty off and then cooked it himself, also making Chanyeol’s favorite coffee. This certainly surprised Chanyeol and Hayoung who didn’t expect to see Kyungsoo in the kitchen already.

Chanyeol seemed all giddy and excited about Kyungsoo cooking again for the first time in years- according to Chanyeol-, while Hayoung seemed a bit wary at the plate presented to her but finished up her food anyway.

And even though Hayoung spent most of the weekend again in her room and Chanyeol had some case papers to review, Kyungsoo was somewhat satisfied because this felt like progress to him at least.

Kyungsoo didn’t just stop there and although he skipped making lunch for the family, he did help with the dinner choices and assisted the chef who prepared the meals, to make sure that at least a bit of his personal taste would go into it.

Then, later at night, Kyungsoo went to bed around the same time Chanyeol did because he wanted to spend some time together.

Since Kyungsoo had been here, he had sex with Chanyeol for a few times and to Kyungsoo it never did seem different even when he felt like a whole another person. Chanyeol was always the same person to him, even now when he wasn’t the college professor Kyungsoo knew him to be.

Chanyeol was the only steady rock left in this turbulent life- or lives- but it was not always that Kyungsoo could obtain this piece of steadiness either.

Chanyeol sat up in their large bed reading on a tablet when Kyungsoo finished showering, changing and went to bed too.

“Turning in already? That’s early,” Chanyeol asked, looking up from his tablet to Kyungsoo who snuggled under the blankets and close next to Chanyeol. It was a quarter past ten at night.

“Haha, yeah,” Kyungsoo agreed, now aware that Kyungsoo E was the type to sleep past midnight and considered sleeping before eleven being early.

“You must be tired from all the cooking today, eh?” Chanyeol brought up, putting his tablet aside to put an arm around Kyungsoo.

“Yeah it’s a bit draining to do some work after a while but I enjoyed it though. It makes me happy to do things for you and Hayoung,” Kyungsoo reasoned, leaning his head against Chanyeol’s shoulder as he gladly recalled the events of the day.

“I’m glad to hear that. You should do things like that more often if it makes you feel better. I do want you to be happy again,” Chanyeol expressed.

“But I’m alright,” Kyungsoo remained confused, not sure what Chanyeol was talking about.

“I know. You don’t have to force yourself around me. It’s fine to not be okay. You know I’m here for you,” Chanyeol assured, pulling Kyungsoo in closer so half of his upper body was pressed up against Chanyeol’s.

Kyungsoo still didn’t know what Chanyeol was talking about so he just muttered a simple “yeah” and leaned his head against Chanyeol’s chest, pressing his ear to where Chanyeol’s heart was so he could hear the beating of Chanyeol’s heart

Kyungsoo allowed himself to relish in the warmth and closeness Chanyeol provided him. Kyungsoo was really grateful for Chanyeol but soon enough he would be rethinking that.

In the next few weeks when spring was coming around, another housekeeper came to Kyungsoo’s private office one morning to ask him if she should dispose of some bottle of pills she found in a cabinet that she was instructed to clean.

Kyungsoo asked to see the bottles first and saw that his name was written on it, obviously being prescribed to him- or rather the Kyungsoo E from before Kyungsoo had arrived here.

Kyungsoo wasn’t familiar with any of this medication because it didn’t seem like the ones he was used to. The internet did tell Kyungsoo that it was psychotic medication mainly for depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorders.

The medication was dated for 2028 so it was likely that Kyungsoo stopped taking it and stopped going for more since he had no new or recent medication around.

Curious and needing to know, Kyungsoo phoned up the clinic that had prescribed him the medication and arranged an appointment with the doctor who was supposed to be the one treating him.

At the time, Kyungsoo didn’t even think of asking Chanyeol first and that would turn out to be one of the best decisions he had ever made in this life at least.

Only after the appointment the following week and going through his own medical records did Kyungsoo find out that he had been going to this psychiatric clinic and had several different therapists since he got pregnant in late 2018.

Kyungsoo also found out shocking information that revealed he attempted to commit suicide when Hayoung was a few months old. And that he continued cutting himself for a few years after that.

Kyungsoo didn’t need a dream for the memories of Kyungsoo E to come back to him. There, in the clinic’s record room with a staff waiting beside him, Kyungsoo trembled with the file in his hands as he was faced with the proof and the memories came rushing.

He and Chanyeol didn’t really make up after Jongdae’s death but a lapse of judgment and too much alcohol did result in them having sex and Kyungsoo getting pregnant one evening.

Chanyeol was reluctant to have the baby and for the first five months of the pregnancy, Kyungsoo believed and prepared himself to be a single father. After that, Chanyeol did come around and decide that he wanted Kyungsoo and the unborn baby in his life, even proposing to Kyungsoo shortly after Hayoung was born.

However, even with Chanyeol’s support then, Kyungsoo had still gone through a lot of emotional stress and trust issues. The result and the postpartum depression had led Kyungsoo to try and hang himself, where he was lucky enough to be found by his father at the time.

Due to how turbulent everything was at the time, Kyungsoo was surprised that Chanyeol still wanted to marry him at the time.

But because of Kyungsoo’s suicide attempt, he barely even raised his own daughter until she was almost four years old, as they were separated for their own safety. Kyungsoo lived with his father while Chanyeol and his family helped raised Hayoung. Basically, the first few years of Kyungsoo’s marriage to Chanyeol was spent separated from each other.

Now, Kyungsoo understood Hayoung’s behavior. It wasn’t her being distant, it was the previous Kyungsoo E who was distant from his own daughter whom he never really managed to form a close emotional bond with.

Kyungsoo felt sick to his core and on the brink of vomiting when he recalled that Kyungsoo E hadn’t exactly been faithful to Chanyeol either, especially during the first few years of their marriage when they had lived apart.

While Chanyeol had been busy setting up a law firm and raising their daughter, Kyungsoo E in the lowest points of his life had cheated on Chanyeol with several different men in short-term affairs as an unhealthy coping mechanism to his problems.

Even if it wasn’t Kyungsoo’s consciousness himself that committed such acts and that it was the fault of this other Kyungsoo E, Kyungsoo still felt abhorrent towards it. Even the memories of Kyungsoo E he now had were revolting to even think about.

It didn’t seem as if Chanyeol knew about these affairs too, which made Kyungsoo feel even more guilty for something he never did.

This wasn’t him at all. Even if Kyungsoo could come to accept the differences in lives between all the other versions of him, he didn’t know if he could ever live with this.

Kyungsoo couldn’t even cry or beg for forgiveness. He believed he had no right to. Not only was he an unfaithful partner, but he was also a neglectful parent. He knew that this wasn’t him but it didn’t erase the partial feeling of responsibility for what his other self did.

There was no saving this world. Kyungsoo couldn’t live like this and he absolutely refused to be played by whoever or whatever was cursing him to live as different versions of himself to never see past the date of January 18th, 2030.

In an act of defiance and a “fuck you” to that, after mulling about it for months, Kyungsoo drove one of his luxury cars into a river on a September evening.

Kyungsoo wanted it to look like an accident and not an act of suicide. Maybe that would help this Chanyeol and Hayoung to move on easier to know that. As for the car, insurance and Chanyeol’s wealth would cover that.

As the car sank to the riverbed, as darkness swarmed in on him and as cold water seeped through the car to eventually lead him into a dismal end, Kyungsoo closed his eyes and allowed his last breath to be suffocated by the crushing weight of the water. The last memory on his head was always the Chanyeol he married as Kyungsoo A and the children he gave birth to.

Right there and then, Kyungsoo had decided that he wasn’t going to be bound by the fear of “dying” every January 18th, 2030. As long as his original- Kyungsoo A’s- consciousness existed but even in the bodies of the different Kyungsoo, he was going to take control and finally put an end to all this.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo F in the year 2019 when he had just begun pursuing his P.h.D. He wasn’t friends with Chanyeol here, he was single and had no children but Kyungsoo didn’t care.

From past experiences, he knew that this world would be taken away from him come January 18th, 2030. He had given up trying to regain the semblance and structure of his previous lives.

It was madness to keep on continuing this cycle to go on and on without finding a way to actually put a stop to it. And Kyungsoo wasn’t ready to descend down that path of madness as if his life wasn’t crazy enough already.

As Kyungsoo F, Kyungsoo lived continued to live with his father and any time he was spending not pretending to be someone taking his P.h.D for the first time, was spent trying to figure out the crucial link he was missing out on.

Kyungsoo wasn’t going to receive the scroll here and he didn’t expect to either but he remembered its contents. The scroll told the story of a man who made a mistake and was forced to live through several different lives until he learns about what he had done wrongly and undoes it.

Since Kyungsoo A was the only one who received the scroll and the others didn’t, Kyungsoo safely assumed that was his original self and everything past that was his “punishment”.

Kyungsoo mapped out the events of the lives of all the Kyungsoo to find both similarities and differences he could pick out apart and analyze. Now was the right time to be utilizing the research skills he had obtained from studying repeatedly to earn the same degree with the same and improvised research.

Kyungsoo agreed that several things always happened even if out of order and not at the right time as they did in Kyungsoo A- the original’s- timeline.

In every version of him, he eventually patched up and progressed his relationship with Chanyeol even if the hows and whys were different each time.

Kyungsoo’s friendship with Baekhyun always grew apart one way or the other. Choongsun always died from a heart attack. Kyungsoo always also got some post bachelor’s education even if he graduated at different times.

And most importantly, Kyungsoo never lived to see past January 18th, 2030.

The most important and significant event that never seemed to change but yet always occurred in every timeline was Jongdae’s death. In all the six lives Kyungsoo had experienced, Jongdae always died on Christmas Eve of 2015 in a car accident in the same car on the same road and with Kyungsoo driving.

While Kyungsoo felt a lot more hopeful into thinking that preventing Jongdae from dying would solve all his problems, he was then plagued with the realization that in all the six lives he had, Kyungsoo had never been in one where Jongdae was still alive.

Jongdae died in 2015 and the earliest Kyungsoo had been sent back to was 2016 as Kyungsoo B. Even now, when he would have more time to try and woo Chanyeol to marry him and have his children, he was already too late to save Jongdae.

Kyungsoo was doomed the moment he woke up in this world already.

This was obviously very unfair. How was this higher power who subjected him to such a fate expecting him to undo the cycle if he wasn’t even given the opportunity to do so in the first place?

To continue defying this natural order that had befallen him, Kyungsoo decided to make his premature exit from Kyungsoo F’s life to hopefully arrive in a time where Jongdae was still alive.

If he wasn’t successful, Kyungsoo would just keep on trying until he was successful.

Not a few months since waking up as Kyungsoo F, he put an end tot he life and jumped off a building on campus. But not before professing his love to Chanyeol by running into the latter’s full classroom and stunning everyone there.

There was nothing to lose because Kyungsoo never had anything to lose in the first place.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo G in the year 2028, in a life where he was married to Chanyeol and the children were still toddlers. But even though it was already too late to save Jongdae, Kyungsoo hesitated to kill himself when he considered Chanyeol and the children.

He spent some time with them and tried to make them happy and did what they wanted as sort of an ode to this life that would not last. It was the only thing he could leave behind for them because Kyungsoo could not bear to sit around for the inevitable day he would lose all of this.

And even though it pained Kyungsoo and he was in literal tears right before ending his life, he knew that this was absolutely necessary.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo G at night instead of in the morning. It seemed that he had just awoken from a nap that lasted into the night instead of regular nighttime sleep. He was also in his old room in his father’s house so he had probably not married Chanyeol and didn’t have children.

Kyungsoo rushed to his phone to see that it was October 5th, 2018. It was two years too late.

So, Kyungsoo went out to the living room and hugged his still alive father one last time before rushing out of the house and throwing himself in front of the last train operating that night.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo H in a bed next to a sleeping Chanyeol in the room of the house they built together. Seeing Chanyeol’s face first thing in the morning made Kyungsoo wish so bad that Jongdae was still alive here, so he could continue living this life.

But he knew that there was no way Jongdae was alive if he and Chanyeol were already living together in their house.

To affirm it, Kyungsoo learned that it was already November 2028.

Before anyone else woke up, Kyungsoo drove to a parking building to throw himself off of and hoped really bad that it would be different next life.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo I in the year 2019 in a creaky and worn-out bed in an unfamiliar and dingy room with faded rooms. The furniture had seen better days and beer bottles and cans littered all over the floor. The living conditions were simply deplorable.

But Kyungsoo didn’t bother to stick around and find out what this life was like once he learned what the date was. He simply kept climbing the stairs since he was in an apartment building, finding the nearest window from a high level that would make sure he would exit this life and proceed onto the next.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo K in November 2025 but he didn’t choose to kill himself right away because he was tired.

It was unlike an exhaustion Kyungsoo had ever felt or could even describe. It wasn’t the kind of tiredness that would fade once he slept or once he had gotten something he wanted. And this tiredness weighed heavily upon his physical being and his emotional state.

In this life as Kyungsoo K, he continued to live alone in his father’s house after Choongsun passed away, where Kyungsoo had no husband or children.

Kyungsoo still had his job at the university and called in sick that morning, even if this so-called sickness was nothing curable by conventional means.

As it rained outside, Kyungsoo sat on the floor beside the sliding doors in the living room, which led to the yard, where Choongsun used to like to sit and smoke.

Kyungsoo curled his legs up to his chest, hugged himself and sobbed. He had no idea how his relationship with Chanyeol or Baekhyun was like, so he couldn’t go to them for comfort and advice if he wanted to.

And even if he could, how was he going to tell all of them about this? Kyungsoo was really alone in this perpetual cycle of misery and loss.

Kyungsoo only stopped crying because he didn’t want sore eyes and a headache later on, even if he failed several times at trying to stop himself from crying. Kyungsoo believed he was weak, that he wasn’t as strong as he thought he would.

He couldn’t decide which was worse; to try and lose or to not try and continue. He was the figurative symbol of a wounded dog who could only whimper away to lick his own wounds. Maybe, he was doomed to live this life over and over again, where not even death was an escape.

After the rain stopped, Kyungsoo dragged himself to the nearest restaurant to get food and then went back home to eat in front of the television in his pajamas with a blanket over his legs.

Kyungsoo watched a funny movie and laughed throughout it, feeling rather elated until he even forgot his problems for a while. Kyungsoo hadn’t felt like this in a long time and it was nice to be able to again.

He was a tired traveler on a long journey with no end in sight. This was the well-needed pit-stop he needed. Kyungsoo realized that even though this life would disappear, his memories wouldn’t and he would still remember the bliss he experienced.

It was a nice thought and later at night, the exhaustion helped Kyungsoo sleep rather well in a dreamless slumber.

Kyungsoo continued taking sick leaves for a few more days but still replied to any emails he received from either his students or the faculty.

He went out to watch a movie at the cinemas, play games at an internet cafe, eat good food from a restaurant he liked and even went to an aquarium to look at the fish and the marine life. Kyungsoo smiled and laughed a lot in that few days, so much that his cheeks became sore and his stomach ached.

But above the actions, Kyungsoo wanted to remember this memory as a moment when he was alone but yet peaceful and in a sense- happy. Kyungsoo wanted to look back on this time fondly when things got tough on his journey navigating the distance that was life.

This wasn’t about anyone or anything else. It was just about Kyungsoo himself.

On the fourth day in Kyungsoo I’s life and the last day of his extended sick leave, Kyungsoo was lazing around in a hoodie and sweatpants on his couch while a popular television show was airing one evening when he heard the door knock several times.

“I’m coming,” Kyungsoo yelled as he scrambled off the couch to peer through the window to see who it was at his door, only to find Chanyeol there.

As unexpected as it was, Kyungsoo opened the door anyway to greet Chanyeol, who had a paper bag in his hand.

“You don’t know how to answer your phone, do you?” Chanyeol sighed, taking off his shoes at the doorway and coming inside even without being invited.

Kyungsoo only made way for Chanyeol to come through, still confused because he hadn’t bothered to know how his relationship was with Chanyeol.

“Umm…I’m sorry?” Kyungsoo apologized only because he felt like he had to.

Chanyeol took off his coat and threw it to the nearest chair before settling down on one end of the couch, taking a while to look and process his thoughts at the sight of Kyungsoo’s ramen cups and soft drink cans on the table.

“Do you want coffee?” Kyungsoo offered, “I don’t have the one you like but if you’re fine with instant coffee, I have that.”

“It’s fine, I ate before I came here,” Chanyeol informed, putting the paper bag down on the table and producing a takeaway bowl and cup from it, “Now, you eat. You haven’t come in to work because you’re sick, aren’t you? I thought that you would be too tired to cook so I brought food for you.”

“I feel better now though,” Kyungsoo emphasized by stretching his arms around himself as he stood near the couch where Chanyeol sat on. He hoped Chanyeol wouldn’t find out that him being sick was just a lie.

“Just eat,” Chanyeol insisted, defeatedly.

“Okay, okay,” Kyungsoo agreed, sitting himself down on the couch with a considerable amount of gap between him and Chanyeol, Kyungsoo not knowing how close was really acceptable.

It seemed that they were at least cordial and good enough friends for Chanyeol to comfortably come over.

“So, how are you feeling? Any better?” Chanyeol asked, looking away from the television and turning his attention towards Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo who was separating the wooden chopsticks looked up from the bowl of soup noodles Chanyeol had bought for him, “Yeah, I do feel much better.”

“That’s good,” Chanyeol responded, leaning back against the couch as he propped one foot to rest on the other knee, “I was worried you’d gotten sicker. You never take so many days off so I thought something was off.”

“Haha, I guess so. It was nothing bad though. I just needed to rest too,” Kyungsoo replied a bit lightheartedly at the knowledge that he was on rather good terms with Chanyeol here, even if it seemed that they were just friends.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that then,” Chanyeol added, relaxing on the couch beside Kyungsoo, “You know if there’s anything wrong, you can tell me about it. I’m here for you, Kyungsoo. You don’t have to hide stuff from me.”

Hearing that in the midst of slurping up the noodles, Kyungsoo paused, swallowed and placed the takeaway bowl back down on the table.

“Uh…,” Kyungsoo gaped, turning to look at Chanyeol who was locking eyes with him now too, “Yeah, I remember.” Kyungsoo didn’t remember it but he just trusted Chanyeol.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” Chanyeol cautiously asked.

“Of course not. I’m not. How could I ever be?” Kyungsoo was quick to deny as he scooted up closer on the couch towards Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo laid his head down on Chanyeol’s shoulder as he thought about the moments when he had been actually afraid of approaching Chanyeol because he feared the rejection and loss.

He was still wary but at this moment, Kyungsoo allowed that guard to slip for a while. He needed to remind himself that he was a weary traveler on a long journey that hadn’t ended and this was the short rest stop he needed.

“I’m happy to hear that, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol returned, also leaning his head against Kyungsoo’s on his shoulder.

Their eyes were trained to the television but neither of them was actually paying attention to the show. Chanyeol wasn’t interested in it and Kyungsoo had seen this show a few times in several different lives now.

“Can I say something?” Kyungsoo spoke softly, lifting his head up so he could look at Chanyeol whose face was just inches away from him.

“Yeah?” Chanyeol agreed to it, not really sure what he was going to happen.

Kyungsoo shifted himself down on the couch so he could rest his head against Chanyeol’s shoulder and still be able to look up at the latter’s face.

“I love you, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo professed.

“I love you too,” Chanyeol reciprocated with a warm smile on his face.

On the couch, Chanyeol too shifted so he could pull Kyungsoo up to sit half on his lap while facing him.

Kyungsoo let Chanyeol do this too even if he was sure they were just somewhat friends here and not lovers at all.

Kyungsoo wasn’t going to punish himself for feeling happy.

Still smiling, Chanyeol gently pushed away some hair from Kyungsoo’s forehead before bringing both his hands up to cup both of Kyungsoo’s cheeks.

Kyungsoo felt so happy and giddy, almost as if this was just a nice dream. He hadn’t felt like this in a while. He was smiling, feeling happy.

Then, Chanyeol pulled Kyungsoo in closer for a kiss, which was most certainly welcome. At that moment, even if for a while, Kyungsoo could envision himself in a green and lush pasture with Chanyeol, while the warm sun beamed down upon. That he was anywhere but stuck in this arduous cycle of loss.

This was the sole reason why Kyungsoo still bothered to keep trying through all the failures and uncertainty. Because falling in love with Chanyeol and having him love Kyungsoo back made it all worthwhile.

Kyungsoo chose to put an end to this life a month later.

**

Kyungsoo woke up as Kyungsoo L in his old room in his father’s house again. As usual, his instinct was to find out what the date was.

When Kyungsoo saw the home screen of his old Samsung Galaxy S6 saying that it was December 21st, 2015, Kyungsoo just remained shocked and frozen in the middle of his room for a while. Before he scampered to call Jongdae and make sure that his friend was still really alive.

And when Kyungsoo heard Jongdae’s voice and distinct laugh over the phone asking him why he sounded so worried, he knew that he had made it.

Kyungsoo shook in tears, not knowing if he was just happy or relieved. It was a strange feeling, maybe even stranger than everything Kyungsoo had experienced in twelve different lives.

On Christmas Eve, they still had their Christmas cum graduation party at Baekhyun’s apartment. But instead of driving home, Kyungsoo insisted that they all stay overnight at Baekhyun’s place until the next morning.

That night, after Baekhyun had gone to bed, Chanyeol was asleep on the couch and Jongdae on a spare mattress; Kyungsoo went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and calm his nerves down.

This was his first time coming back to such a time and he wasn’t sure if this life would also end on January 18th, 2030 or if he was allowed to continue past that. Whichever it was, Kyungsoo would still have to redo his entire life and he wasn’t so sure if that was going to turn out well too.

Even in the cool apartment, Kyungsoo was sweating as he kept refilling that one glass of water when Jongdae came into the kitchen.

“Oh,” Jongdae gasped, surprised, “I thought you went to sleep in Baekhyun’s room already.”

Kyungsoo faked a chuckle, “No, not yet. I probably had too much to drink tonight.”

“I see, I see,” Jongdae nodded, grabbing a mug and moving to the water dispenser for a drink too.

Jongdae then asked, “You’re feeling better? You seem worried these past few days. Something troubling you?”

“What? No, nothing at all,” Kyungsoo feigned his ignorance.

“Ah, okay then,” Jongdae accepted, “At first I thought you were worried since we’re graduating and have to face the real world after that. But you and Chanyeol are going to pursue your master’s first so I suppose you can put off that worry for a while unlike me.”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo pondered on the reality now that Jongdae would stay alive, “I suppose you’d have to go job hunting after this Christmas season.”

Jongdae laughed softly so as to not make too much noise, “I’m already not looking forward to it but hey, that’s life.”

“It is,” Kyungsoo affirmed, smiling when he remembered that Jongdae would now have a bright and wide future ahead of him.

“You know, speaking of which, Chanyeol was really happy when he heard that you were going to continue studying too,” Jongdae informed, nudging Kyungsoo with his elbow.

“Because he still has a friend left in university after everyone else has left?” Kyungsoo dryly chuckled.

“Nope,” Jongdae shook his head, smiling cheekily as if hinting towards something.

Kyungsoo sighed playfully, “I’m bad at guessing, come on tell me.”

“Okay, then but you can’t tell anyone I said this to you, alright?” Jongdae leaned in closer, speaking softer.

“Okay?” Kyungsoo had no idea what he was agreeing to.

“I think Chanyeol likes you. He’s been talking about you a lot and he gets all excited when he hears that you’ll be around when we hang out,” Jongdae excitedly revealed.

“Are you sure?” Kyungsoo said out in disbelief. Did Chanyeol always have a crush on Kyungsoo all this time?

“You bet I am,” Jongdae confidently asserted, putting an arm around Kyungsoo’s shoulder, “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you this but will you allow it if I set you up on a date with Chanyeol? ”

“Oh my god, yes,” Kyungsoo blurted out without even sparing it a second thought.

Jongdae lived to see Christmas day of 2015 and many more to come. With Jongdae’s help and Baekhyun encouragement and without a tragedy that tore apart their friend group, Kyungsoo went out on his first date with Chanyeol in January of 2016.

Kyungsoo and Chanyeol officially became a couple in the spring and continued dating throughout graduate school. When Kyungsoo graduated with his master’s degree in the spring of 2018, Chanyeol proposed and they were married the following year in the fall of 2019.

Kyungsoo gave birth to fraternal twin boys whom he named the same in the spring of 2021, while he was still pursuing a P.h.D.

Choongsun passed away in 2026 but Kyungsoo accepted it. Nothing was permanent and it was his father’s time to go and Kyungsoo did not regret anything when it happened because he had done all he could as a soon.

In 2029, Kyungsoo, Chanyeol, and their children moved into their family home.

Baekhyun never had a stable relationship that could last more than two years but he had a good-paying job and owned a nice apartment in a foreign country so he had it going for himself somewhat.

Jongdae also met a woman who he married and settled down to have children with. He still lived somewhere nearby to Chanyeol and Kyungsoo so they could see each other pretty often.

The scroll never returned to Kyungsoo either here, so he wasn’t too sure if he would get to see January 19th, 2030. He didn’t know if preventing Jongdae’s death was the real key to stopping this curse but he just had a feeling that even if he didn’t, that this would be his last journey even if it meant that he never woke up at all tomorrow. 

He might have been physically 37 years old in the present day as Kyungsoo L but he was way older than that. His soul was old and tired. As strange as his circumstances were, he was still finite. 

Kyungsoo had dinner one last time with his family on January 18th. He made Chanyeol’s favorite coffee and the twins’ favorite meal even if it wasn't really suitable for dinner. 

Then, Kyungsoo tucked his twins in to bed and went to sleep in Chanyeol’s embrace, at peace and afraid of nothing. Even if tomorrow would never come.

This was where it ended, Kyungsoo thought to himself as fatigue washed over him, as he closed his eyes and finally went to sleep.

**

  
Kyungsoo woke up in the morning in the same bed, in the same room. He got up and refused to look at the date and time.

Instead, he walked outside, down the corridor where the sun was already shining through the windows. It was dead in the middle of winter but yet he felt an odd sense of warmth shrouding upon him. It could just be the thermostat, maybe. 

Kyungsoo had nothing in his mind but his feet took him to the living room of the house built out of love.

There, Chanyeol was sitting on the couch with the twins who were watching cartoons on the television.

Kyungsoo sat himself down on the couch with them, smiling as he greeted them a good morning and they welcomed him eagerly.

After all the tears, joy and all kinds of weather, he was not in the same world but yet he was right back where he started.

Kyungsoo L of L.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To those who can't understand the symbolism of the last sentence, Kyungsoo considers the point of "January 18th" to be where he starts living all these different lives. It is January 19th, 2030. He's never been on this date before so he's starting all over again in a sense. 
> 
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> ...and to you reading this. Thank you for coming this far with me. 
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